Tuesday, October 6, 2020
No Meat, No Milk, No Bread: Hunger Crisis Rocks Latin America - Bloomberg
by James Attwood, Valentina Fuentes, Jonathan Gilbert and Michael McDonald
<p>Millions are getting pushed into poverty, moving from relatively comfortable lives to not knowing where their next meal is coming from.</p>
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-09-28/no-meat-no-milk-no-bread-hunger-crisis-rocks-latin-america?sref=woWS9Szx
He couldn't feed his family. Matilde Alonso knew it was true but couldn't believe it. The pandemic had just hit Guatemala in full force and Alonso, a 34-year-old construction worker, was suddenly jobless.
He sat up all alone till late that night, his mind racing, and fought back tears. He had six mouths to feed, no income and no hope of receiving anything beyond the most meager of crisis-support checks -- some $130 -- from the cash-strapped government.
Today, Alonso said, breakfast, lunch and dinner all look about the same in his house in El Jocotillo: maybe a tortilla with salt; maybe a tortilla with beans; maybe a bowl of rice and beans. "We used to eat meat. Now, there's no meat. We used to eat chicken. Now, there's no chicken. We used to drink milk. Now, there's no milk." Even bread, he said, is off the menu.
For tens of millions like Alonso, the pandemic has exposed just how fragile economic status is worldwide. In many ways, nowhere has that been more apparent than in Latin America, where a resurgence of poverty is bringing a vicious wave of hunger in a region that was supposed to have mostly eradicated that kind of malnutrition decades ago. From Buenos Aires to Mexico City, families are skipping on meals and swapping fresh produce for starchy and sugary items. Even in Chile, a developing-world success story, some neighborhoods are turning to community cook-ups in a throwback to the dictatorship era of the 1980s.
Social workers prepare and serve food during a cook-up in the Lo Hermida neighborhood of Santiago, Chile. Some communities have revived the dictatorship-era "olla comun" communal kitchens to provide aid during the pandemic-driven crisis.
Photographer: Tamara Merino/Bloomberg
Latin America stands out because most of the region's governments don't have the financial might to deliver the huge amounts of aid that's been seen in places like the U.S. and Europe. Then there are the millions of workers who labor in the informal economy, selling mangos from a street cart or cleaning homes for cash, who are often locked out of assistance programs.
The United Nations' World Food Programme estimates that the Latin American and Caribbean nations in which it operates will see a surge of roughly 270% in the number of people facing severe food insecurity over the coming months. That rise -- to 16 million from 4.3 million before the pandemic -- is likely to be the steepest in the world and more than twice the estimated global growth rate, Norha Restrepo, a WFP spokesperson in Panama, said by telephone.
Growing the region's middle class has come in fits and starts. A boom in commodity prices from 2000 to 2014 sparked a decrease in the poverty rate from 27% to 12%. But as demand for raw materials cooled, there was a swift reversal. Argentina sank into deep recession, and the economic situation in Venezuela took an unprecedented dive into despair. Meanwhile, even the earlier period of growth was hiding deep fault lines in the region, where economic inequality, racial tensions and police brutality brewed just beneath the surface. Those pressures boiled over into mass protests last year, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets in Colombia, Chile and Ecuador.
The pandemic has made economic stability even more precarious, with millions now making the unthinkable move from relatively comfortable lives to not knowing where their next meal is coming from.
Food Access in Latin America
Percentage of the population that cannot afford a healthy diet
Source: FAO
"The difference between being poor and going poor is brutal," said Jose Aguilar, founder of Reactivemos La Esperanza, which supports 100 families in Costa Rica and is trying to reach more people. "When you're middle class and you have food, access to education and are accustomed to a certain quality of life and all of a sudden it's taken away from you through no fault of your own, that hits families really hard."
The region is on track for its worst recession in a century with a 9.1% contraction forecast for this year and unemployment set to reach 13.5%, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, or Eclac. With half the working population living outside of formal economies, job numbers don't tell the whole story. Regionally, Eclac expects an additional 28 million to enter the ranks of extreme poverty this year, with women overrepresented in poor households.
"This economic and health crisis is just starting, and it'll result in the largest number of people living in food scarcity in recent times," said Maria Teresa Garcia, who heads Bancos de Alimentos de Mexico, a food charity. "This crisis is going to leave a mark for a long, long time."
Volunteers distribute boxes of food and hygiene products to residents of a favela in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Brazil has combatted economic distress with cash stipends and aid that is bringing down rates of extreme poverty.
Photographer: Victor Moriyama/Bloomberg
Other parts of the world are also seeing the reversal. The World Bank in June warned that the pandemic could undo years of progress for the poor in less-developed nations such as India and Nigeria, with as many as 100 million more people expected to fall into extreme poverty. With that, there will be a massive spike in food inequality. As many as 132 million more people than previously projected could go hungry in 2020, and this year's increase may be more than triple any this century, according to UN estimates. Latin America is helping to lead that surge.
In Chile, Sonia Gallardo has gone from eating dinners of chicken and rice to washing down bread and butter with coffee. Sometimes it's only coffee.
She immigrated from Peru 12 years ago for a better life in Chile, leaving behind an old two-room adobe house in Chiclayo that had been passed down to her mother. Working as a houskeeper in Santiago, she used to make $600 a month, enough to start saving for a home of her own. But strict lockdowns ended that job, and now she's lucky to make $80 a month reselling cleaning products in the city's bustling markets. There's barely enough for groceries. She's suddenly dropped 10 pounds and is adding elastic to her pants to keep them from falling down.
"I never thought this was going to happen. I thought that I would never have to live like I lived in Peru again," Gallardo said.
A resident receives a meal at the "olla comun" in Lo Hermida. The community meals are funded with donations that are starting to stretch thin.
Photographer: Tamara Merino/Bloomberg
Like most of the world, the hunger gripping Latin America has nothing to do with insufficient supply. In fact, the region is an agricultural powerhouse, with its fertile plains and valleys producing grains, fruits and proteins that help feed the world. The crisis is about whether those thrown out of work during the pandemic can afford to eat.
For the most part, aid from governments is far outstripped by the need, even if some countries decided to implement aggressive stimulus packages. Brazil, for example, has started an emergency cash stipends program so ambitious that it temporarily helped bring down extreme poverty readings to national historic lows. But that massive program is expiring at the end of the year and is too fiscally expensive to sustain further. In most countries, payments are limited and people spend any cash they get to first pay for housing and utility costs. There's often little left over for food.
In Argentina, Miguel Leiva pulled himself out of the unemployment and drugs of a Buenos Aires slum, and he now supports his wife and two children as a bus driver and is training to be a primary-school teacher. The country's 41% inflation is eating into his $525 a month salary, and strict lockdowns mean he can no longer work extra hours. He's behind on credit-card and utility payments and weekly barbecues of Argentina's famed short ribs are now "a luxury we can't afford." The family has also cut back on fruit and vegetables. Chocolate biscuits, loaded with sugar, have replaced expensive yogurts, while the family's intake of flour for homemade pasta has jumped by as much as tenfold.
"It's the same for everyone," Leiva, 45, said. "We may eat OK for two weeks, but then it's a case of surviving until the end of the month and the next paycheck."
At the start of the pandemic in March, the Argentine government sent members of the military to distribute food to residents. Argentina's prolonged lockdowns have affected the economy as the country slides into its third consecutive year of contraction, pushing more people into poverty.
Photographer: Sarah Pabst/Bloomberg
An undernourished population typically means more costly visits to doctors and hospitals, a less productive workforce and more school absenteeism. Most concerning to the UN are the implications for development of young children. Food insecurity also risks exacerbating unrest after the wave of protests in 2019.
In such a diverse region, the economic impact from the pandemic is uneven. Poorer countries like Haiti and parts of Central America that rely on remittances are particularly vulnerable. As are the millions of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru who depend on informal work and lack access to social programs. Tens of thousands of them are returning home, bringing more mouths to feed in Venezuela, which was already on the brink of famine.
Even in more developed countries such as Chile, some communities are having to band together to ensure people are fed.
In the Santiago neighborhood of Lo Hermida—known for its participation in social struggles especially during the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s—Erika Martinez is organizing "common pots," or community cook-ups, that have fed about 300 people a day since May.
The food is mostly noodles and legumes. Local butchers or grocers sometimes kick in leftovers, and chicken is a rare treat. The cooking is done with firewood because there's no money for gas. The clientele is mainly informal workers such as part-time tradesmen, gardeners or seamstresses who've been hit the hardest by pandemic lockdowns.
"For us in Lo Hermida, the common pots represent a sad memory of the 80s," said 53-year-old Martinez. "I never thought we would have to go back to that."
Erika Martinez, left, prepares over 100 pieces of roasted chicken to be served at the "olla comun." Her community kitchen has fed about 300 people a day since May.
Photographer: Tamara Merino/Bloomberg
Back in Guatemala, the government has already reported an increase in the rate of acute malnutrition among children aged 5 and under. Alonso, the construction worker, is so worried about how to keep his four kids fed that he's started planting corn and beans. A friend leased him a small plot of land. Another gave him some seeds and fertilizer and told him he can have until the end of the year to pay back the cost, he said.
"It's what I've been doing all pandemic long — improvising as best I can."
— With assistance by Ezra Fieser, Nicolle Yapur, Tatiana Freitas, Andrea Navarro, and Andrew Rosati
Journal entry: 10-5-20
10/5/20 Journal entry
jcase
One can only hope that the Republican party's neo-fascist leadership COVID infections will assist their defeat in the presidency and the Senate, and retreat from the current political scene. The latter remains doubtful. A fascist movement as big, as well funded, and infested in the highest institutions, as this one --- led, for now, by Trump -- will not expire from the scene with his personal passage . Nor will the underlying systematic contradictions and inequities, both national and international, that are driving the paralyzing political divides recede autonomously. Without the imposition of serious, nationwide public mandated therapies -- economic, healthwise, environmental, and political therapie, our descent into hell will not be slowed or arrested. To say that such requirements argue for a "war footing", equivalent to that of the last time global fascism rose to power, may be understating the matter.
Consider three latest items in the 2020 daily cascade of horrors from national and international info outlets:
1. HUNGER IN AMERICA, ESPECIALLY FOR CHILDREN, HAS “SKYROCKETED” DURING COVID-19, DATA SHOWS' The headlines gives you the gist.
2. A local ministries leader's call for help meeting the Homeless Challenges in my home county. Local Institutional support is either missing or overwhelmed.
3. Biden win could restore US-EU partnership for coordinated approach to China. The international humpty dumpty has been broken by Trump. Restoring it will be complicated, and made harder by Chinese international (Belt and Road global development actions) and domestic performance and resilience during both COVID and economic recovery --- all while under increasing economic and diplomatic assaults by Trump. The competitive pressure on western political and economic systems will grow very intense if Chinese socialism keeps consolidating its gains as it has done. Persistent Chinese gains will compel global recognition of the socialist alternative approaches to economic management, and principles of "peaceful coexistence" This does not bode well for unity returning quickly to US-EU, or US-China relationships, in the short run, however. There will be little help, and possibly military conflicts, from the international catastrophes compounded by COVID.
The COVID, and associated economic, plagues are proving that corrupt, billionaire cliques --- and the political and institutional domination of market relations by a variety of billionaire cliques --- are futile against forces of destruction of this scale, and that are triggered external to markets. The fed cannot fix this. Keeping the financial system from collapsing is essential, but fatally insufficient. Public spending and investment on a massive scale -- but under the most scientifically informed leadership is necessary: coordinated, national, international, but decisive leadership. The poisonous political paralysis of the Obama years after passage of the ACA is not a state from which any remedy to the catastrophes can be retrieved.
Unfortunately, other ideologies have considerably more influence in politics than science: religion, "morality", "property", "family values" -- can together or severally serve to transform raw or crafty interests, or targets of personal grievances into organized political factions or anti-factions. The factional ideologies can frequently be adapted (picture the Falwell's) to serve a particular class, or other powerful economic interest. The public's vulnerability to these pitches is due in no small part to the tiny proportion of the population that has genuine training and education in scientific subjects and methodologies. Fascism -- rule by force on behalf of the most powerful billionaire factions -- is an example of the billionaire's mentality when attempting to opportunistically manipulate factional ideologies among races, nationalities, and other identities, while profiting from vast social challenges and conflicts. Trump's infection on the heels of his Big Lies about the virus is a good illustration of the ultimate futility of such efforts. But that futility will only add extra curses on the immense damage.Friday, October 2, 2020
Jared Bernstein: September 2020 jobs report: Slowing jobs gains and a huge spike in long-term unemployment [feedly]
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JaredBernstein/~3/zjkJ6ruWX_Y/
Payrolls grew by 661,000 last month, well below expectations, and the jobless rate ticked down to 7.9 percent, driven not by job gains, but by people leaving the labor force. Long-term unemployment spiked sharply–in fact, its largest one-month spike on record–and shifts continue from temporary to permanent job losses. In other words, though the labor market continues to improve, it is doing so at a slower pace, and the risk of increasing numbers of job seekers stuck in long-term joblessness is rising.
Payrolls continue to climb back as commerce gradually recovers, but the pace of gains has slowed, as shown in the figure below. Private sector gains last month were stronger, at 877,000, as local education jobs fell sharply, by 231,000. At least part of that loss is due to the impact of Covid on decline job opportunities for bus drivers, school cafeteria workers, and janitors due to much less in-person teaching.
Importantly, this deceleration in job gains (see figure) is consistent with the absence of two absolutely essential policies from the federal government: virus control and fiscal stimulus. The former was never taken seriously by the Trump administration, at tremendous cost to the lives, health, and living standards of millions of Americans. The latter–stimulus–was initially implemented with real urgency, but the fact that such urgency has demonstrably faded is evident in today's report.
No labor market indicators have regained their pre-crisis peak, as shown in the figure below. It shows the percent of losses regained since payrolls started growing and unemployment started falling. For example, the unemployment rate initially rose from 3.5 percent in February to 14.7 percent in April, an increase of 11.2 percentage points. Since then, it has declined to 7.9 percent in September, meaning it filled up 6.8 points of the 11.2 point hole, or 61 percent.
The first point from the table is that all bars are well below 100 percent. Sizable holes still persist and while it has clearly improved, the job market is still operating with recessionary levels of slack. Blacks in particular reveal lagging progress. The recovery of both their unemployment and employment-to-population rates (EPOPs) are lagging behind the others. This is a serious concern which appears to confirm the strong cyclical component of Black labor market outcomes, meaning they benefit disproportionately from strong labor demand and, in the current situation, take more of the brunt of weaker labor demand.
Other signs of decelerating job opportunities include the increase in permanent, versus temporary, job losers (meaning laid-off workers who should not expect to be called back to work as commerce reopens) and the related spike in long-term unemployment, i.e., those seeking work for at least six months. Back in May, when more jobless workers still thought they were temporarily furloughed, permanent layoffs were only 14 percent of the unemployment. In September, that share was 36 percent.
The 781,000 spike in long-term unemployment in September was historically notable: it is the largest one-month increase in this indicator on record, with data starting in 1948 (note: this record holds as a share of unemployment as well, which spike up from 12 to 19 percent). The risk here is what economists call "hysteresis:" the phenomenon of a group of potential workers relegated to the labor market's sidelines for long periods. Should their skills or even just their basic labor-market attachment fade due to long periods of joblessness, they risk a lasting disconnection from work and wages at great cost to themselves, their families, and the greater economy.
Though it is too early to tell whether these early indicators will morph into a longer-term trend, my work in this area suggests that Black, immigrant, and low-income workers are particularly vulnerable to this outcome. Certainly, the bars for Blacks in the figure above are suggestive of that result, but it is one I will be carefully tracking in coming weeks and months.
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What the coronavirus recession means for U.S. public-sector employment [feedly]
https://equitablegrowth.org/what-the-coronavirus-recession-means-for-u-s-public-sector-employment/
According to the latest Employment Situation report released by Bureau of Labor Statistics today, the U.S. economy in September added 661,000 nonfarm payroll jobs, reflecting an important slowdown in employment growth. Also known as the Jobs Report, the release shows that the share of 25- to 54-year-old prime-age workers who have a job fell from 75.3 percent in August to 75.0 percent, and the number of unemployed workers who report being on a permanent layoff increased by 345,000 for a total of 3.8 million workers out of 12.6 million unemployed workers in September.
This final Jobs Report before the 2020 presidential election calls into question what policies are needed to foster an equitable and sustained economic recovery in the midst of the coronavirus recession. The report also reflects U.S. labor market conditions more than a month after the expiration of the $600 "plus-up" in unemployment benefits funded through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act. The end of this plus-up is forcing workers to return to work during an uncontrolled pandemic with few other options to support themselves and their families.
As such, there continue to be important income, race, and gender disparities evident in the latest Jobs Report, as well as questions about the quality of jobs being added that underlie last month's net job gains.
At 7 percent, White workers' unemployment rate is well-below the 8.9 percent jobless rate for Asian American workers, the 10.3 percent jobless rate for Latinx workers, and the 12.1 percent jobless rate for Black workers. The unemployment rate for women, which was lower than the jobless rate for men just before the onset of the coronavirus recession, stands 0.3 percentage points above it, at 8 percent. Additionally, 865,000 women dropped out of the labor force in September, and therefore are no longer counted among the ranks of the unemployed. Longstanding disparities along the lines of race, ethnicity, and gender continue to be exacerbated amid the tenuous economic recovery.
So far, employment losses in the public sector are not as deep as in the private sector, but they are worrying given that government is the only major sector to have experienced net losses last month, shedding 216,000 jobs in September. Additionally, the public sector was exceptionally slow to recover from the previous economic downturn. Even though the private sector also took a harder hit during and immediately after the Great Recession of 2007–2009, jobs were back to their pre-crisis level by March 2014. In contrast, government employment did not fully bounce back until late 2019, excluding a brief spike in 2010 due to hiring for the past decennial Census. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1
The crisis in the public sector also threatens many good jobs. Government workers tend to be less likely than their private-sector counterparts to experience either job losses or poverty, and have greater access to employee benefits such as healthcare. At 33.6 percent, the union membership rate of government workers is five times greater than for private-sector workers. Since the 1960s, effective enforcement of equal opportunity employment policies and greater political power led to a rise in the share of Black workers holding government jobs, making the public sector an important pathway to economic mobility and security for many marginalized workers.
Over the past few decades, however, public-sector jobs are becoming more insecure and less effective at promoting equitable labor market outcomes—a process that Great Recession of 2007–2009 seems to have accelerated.The past 40 years are marked by a shift from decent to lousy jobs, with both the decline in public-sector job quality and the loss of government jobs through recessions contributing to rising economic inequality. Research by Kimberly Christensen of Sarah Lawrence College, for example, shows that the fiscal crunch faced by state and local governments in the aftermath of the Great Recession was particularly damaging for women workers and workers of color because it shifted employment from good government jobs to much more precarious work in retail, leisure, and poorly paid medical care work.
Even though government jobs used to serve as a buffer against U.S. labor market inequality, their equalizing effect weakened over time. When analyzing racial disparities in the likelihood of being laid off, Elizabeth Wrigley-Field of the University of Minnesota and Nathan Seltzer from the University of Wisconsin-Madison find that Black workers are more likely to involuntarily lose their jobs than White workers, a disparity that has increased since the 1990s. The public sector used to reduce Black workers' disproportionate exposure to layoffs, but it became less protective over the past three decades, the authors find.
The great majority—63 percent—of public-sector workers are employed in local governments, compared to 23 percent in state governments and 14 percent in the federal government. This means local and state government workers—among whom women and Black workers make up a larger share of the labor force than in the federal government—are once again experiencing the deepest job losses because states are required to keep balanced budgets without debt financing.
In addition to the downward pressure on state and local employment in recessions, the increase in federal employment over the past 6 months is due to this year's decennial Census staffing. This staffing is now beginning to wind down. (See Figure 2.)
Figure 2
Another slow recovery in the public sector—a sector in which Black workers, women workers, and union members are overrepresented—would put the brakes on the economic security they and their families need to climb out of the coronavirus recession, deepen existing U.S. labor market disparities, and become a drag on the economic recovery, as consumer spending declines as more quality jobs disappear.As state and local governments struggle with deep revenue and budget shortfalls, greater fiscal support to state and local governments is essential.
In addition to the unique risks facing the public sector, the private sector faces challenges to continuing jobs growth as well. These challenges exist in the public sector, too, particularly jobs such as Kindergarten through 12th grade school teachers, but private-sector service jobs that require face-to-face interaction or require close proximity to one's co-workers during an uncontrolled pandemic means that many of the recent jobs gains remain precarious.
Without sweeping and coordinated public health measures in place and effective treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, the number of additional jobs gained amid this tenuous economic rebound is fragile, and these jobs remain hazardous. The upshot: This continuing recession is still exacerbating long-term trends of decreasing job quality and rising economic precarity, which are especially harmful to marginalized workers, including Black workers and women workers, and their families, particularly amid a still-lethal pandemic.
-- via my feedly newsfeed
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
PK: The G.O.P. Plot to Sabotage 2021 [feedly]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/opinion/trump-biden.html
Text only
Nobody knows for sure who will win in November. Joe Biden holds the advantage right now, but between the vagaries of the Electoral College and whatever October surprises the Trumpists cook up — you know they're coming — who knows?
One thing that's clear, however, is that Republicans — not just Donald Trump, but his whole party — are acting as if there's no tomorrow. Or, more precisely, they're acting as if there's no next year.
And this means that if Biden does win, he will have to govern in the face of what amounts to nonstop policy sabotage from his political opponents.
To see what I mean about acting as if there's no next year, consider the large (and illegal) indoor rally Trump held Sunday in Nevada.
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Before the release of Bob Woodward's new book, you might have argued that Trump doesn't believe the science and didn't realize that his event might well sicken and kill many people. But we now know that he's well aware of the risks, and has been all along. He just doesn't care.
Refer someone to The Times.
They'll enjoy our special rate of $1 a week.
Or consider Trump's weeks of silence and inaction on the wildfires ravaging Western states. It's true that he won't win California, Oregon or Washington. But he's supposed to be the president of America, not just red states.
Furthermore, those states account for almost 19 percent of the U.S. economy; you might think that he'd care about the damage they're suffering, which will spill over to the rest of the country. But he clearly doesn't.
For me, however, the most striking demonstration of Republican refusal to think ahead is the fact that nothing has been done to alleviate either the suffering of unemployed Americans — who lost much of the benefits that were sustaining them at the end of July — or the looming fiscal crisis of state and local governments.
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I read a number of business newsletters that try to offer guidance on future economic and policy developments; early in the summer just about all of them predicted that the Democratic House and the Republican Senate would reach some kind of compromise on economic relief. The unemployed would keep getting enhanced benefits, although less than the $600-a-week supplement they'd been getting under the CARES Act; state and local governments would get significant help, although not as much as Democrats wanted.
But there was no deal, just Trump executive memorandums that authorized some extra payments and a gimmick that has already fizzled. What happened?
My interpretation is while Democrats passed a relief bill that was supposed to serve as a starting point for negotiations way back in May, Republicans dithered, held back both by hard-line right-wingers and by fantasies of a V-shaped economic recovery. And by the time they realized that their fantasies wouldn't come true, it was too late to take action that would have much impact on the election. So why bother doing anything?
That is, it's as if Republicans don't expect to win, and they figure that if they do, they'll deal with the mess somehow.
Now, a naïve observer might expect politicians to consider the national interest, not just the political fortunes of their own party. But not these politicians, and not this party.
All of this has ominous implications for the state of the nation in the months and perhaps years after the election.
Suppose that Biden wins (which isn't a safe assumption) and that he does so without Trump and his supporters generating a hugely disruptive constitutional crisis (which is definitely not a safe assumption). Even so, there will still be two months during which Republicans hold both the White House and the Senate.
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Traditionally, departing administrations try to smooth the path for their successors. If you think that's going to happen this time, I have miles of new border wall, paid for by Mexico, that you might want to buy.
What's actually going to happen, at best, is nothing: no actions to limit the spread of the coronavirus, no financial relief for families and local governments in crisis. And does anyone want to bet against the possibility of deliberate actions to make things worse?
So if Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20, he'll be the second Democratic president in a row to inherit a nation in crisis, but this time one much worse than the one facing Barack Obama.
And the troubles won't end on Inauguration Day. If Republicans still hold the Senate, they'll do everything they can to sabotage the new Biden administration.
Remember, back in 2011 House Republicans held America hostage, threatening to force a default on the national debt unless Obama gave in to their demands. And that was the pre-Trump G.O.P. — already an extremist party, but not to the degree it is now.
Things will be better if Democrats take the Senate as well as the White House. But Biden will still face constant obstruction. My guess is that whatever they say today, Democrats will eventually be forced to eliminate the filibuster, simply to make the nation governable.
The point is that while a Biden victory, if it happens, will save American democracy from immediate collapse, it won't cure the sickness that afflicts our body politic.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography. @PaulKrugman
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The hidden costs of stock-market-first U.S. economic policies [feedly]
https://equitablegrowth.org/the-hidden-costs-of-stock-market-first-u-s-economic-policies/
The idea that sound U.S. economic policy begins and ends with a strong stock market is becoming pervasive. Advocates of what I call the stock-market-first approach want you to focus on the stock market when you pass judgment at the ballot box this November. Stock market indexes are back to pre-coronavirus pandemic levels and, until recently, were testing new highs. If you have a 401(k) savings plan, it probably soared over the past 4 years.
The dramatic jump in the stock market since the 2016 election is the only information that a true believer in stock-market-first thinks you need to know. There is no need for you to understand why the stock market has gone up. There is no need for you to understand how the policies that increased stock prices came at the expense of other things you also might care about.
But if you are planning to vote with your 401(k) in mind this November, then you might want to take the time to understand the why and the how of the recent stock market boom.
Stock prices are determined by three factors. The first is the profits that companies are expected to earn. The second is the safe rate of return on government debt set by the Federal Reserve. And the third is the risk premium that stock investors earn on top of the interest they would get if they held government debt instead.
Once you understand how movements in profits, interest rates, and risk premia together affect the stock market, it is a short jump to understanding the role of government policy. Nothing new has been discovered in recent years about how government policies affect stock prices. We have just reached the point of pushing policies that inflate the stock market without regard for the consequences.
Once you understand that government can move the stock market, you are entitled to ask whether and how government should move the stock market. If government policy creates imbalances between economic fundamentals and stock prices, those imbalances are revealed in time, and often with disastrous consequences, especially for 401(k) investors who are largely invested on autopilot.
And even if government takes extraordinary additional steps to avert the collapse of an overvalued stock market, the policy actions needed to keep stock prices inflated impose other costs. When government moves income, wealth, and debt around to boost stock prices, that money must come from somewhere. Your 401(k) account may have gone up, but the things you lost along the way are likely larger than the gains.
Think about your slow salary growth and low interest rates on your savings accounts. Think about funding for the programs such as Medicare and Social Security that you also will depend on. Or, even more broadly, think about the importance of sustained economic growth to you and your family, compared to a boom-and-bust economy characterized by soaring stock prices followed by swift and sometimes-deep recessions.
If you are content not knowing how government policy helped fuel the recent stock market boom and what that means for your future, you should stop reading. But if you would like to know a little more about the hidden costs of stock-market-first economic policies, you might want to read on.
What moves the stock market?
Business schools teach you that a share of corporate stock just represents the value of the legal claim today on expected future company profits. The value of the stock is simply that stream of future profits converted to a present value.
If I promised to pay you $10 per year for the next 10 years, what is that worth to you today? If you place no value on time (and ignore inflation), the answer is just the $100 total you will receive over the 10 years.
But if time does have value to you—meaning $10 today is worth more than $10 next year, and so on—the present value of the 10 $10 payments is less than $100. In fact, if you value time at (say) 2 percent per year, then business schools teach you that the stream of promised $10 payments for the next 10 years is worth just less than $90.
If you prefer to think in forward-looking terms, this present-value calculation is the same as saying, "If you put $90 in the bank today at 2 percent interest, at the end of the 10 years, you would have $100."
Pretty basic math.
Stocks are more complicated because the future company profits are not a promise of certain payments; they are expectations about unknown payments. Analysts working on Wall Street make good money by predicting future profits, but there is uncertainty around even the best predictions.
Introducing uncertainty means the calculation of a stock's value needs one more input. In addition to valuing time, you need to value the uncertainty about the profits. If the government will pay you 2 percent interest with certainty, why would you buy a stock that paid an expected 2 percent return, knowing you could lose money if the company's profits are below expectations?
So, assume that instead of a 2 percent interest rate, the rate of return on the stock is expected to be 5 percent. That is, by switching from the guaranteed government interest rate of 2 percent to the stock, you will receive, on average, a 3 percent "risk premium" on the investment. Sticking with the $10 payment per year over 10 years, but using a discount rate of 5 percent, the stream of payments has a present value today of about $77.
Again, in forward-looking terms, that means investing $77 in the stock market today is expected to leave you with $100 in 10 years. But the only thing you really know is that the actual amount in 10 years will be centered around an expected $100, and it could be a lower or higher. That is what uncertainty means.
And remember, if you want to be sure you will have $100 in 10 years, you should invest $90 in the 2 percent government bond. That is, you can just pay $13 more now to avoid the uncertainty about having exactly $100 10 years from now.
These examples are intentionally simple, but they make it possible to introduce a key point about how stock prices move. When one of the pricing inputs changes, the effect on stock prices is magnified. So, if the profits of a company are expected to grow 1 percent per year for the 10 years instead of staying constant at $10, the stock price jumps 5 percent, to $81. In the real world, where companies earn profits for more than 10 years, this magnification effect is obviously much larger.
The same amplification principle holds for changes in the real interest rate on government debt and the risk premium. If the interest rate on government debt is decreased from 2 percent to 1 percent, then the present value of the 10-year stream of $10 payments is worth $81, a 5 percent increase in the stock price.
If the world becomes more uncertain, such that the risk premium jumps from 3 percent to 6 percent, then the stock price falls from $77 to $67. Small changes in stock-price determinants lead to big changes in stock prices.
Lest you think this is all that I think you need to know in order to make money in the stock market, remember that the relatively simple math just tells us what a share of stock should be worth. Expectations about future profits and the risk premium move with market participant beliefs. The stock you own is only worth exactly what the highest bidder is willing to pay for it.
In 2013, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was split three ways. Each of the recipients had made significant contributions in the field of "asset pricing," which basically means thinking about what a share of stock should be worth. The fact that the prize was split between three economists with different views about what people believe and how they act is suggestive that the puzzle of valuing the stock market is far from solved.
Nobel Prizes are not given out for casual observation, but luckily, the details about "price earnings ratios" and "method of moments" and "three factor models" are not key to the message here. What matters is that the three key stock-price determinants—expected profits, interest rates, and risk premia—move together and reinforce each other.
The ways in which the three stock-price determinants move together is well-established. If the Fed lowers the risk-free interest rate or something happens to make investors think profits will increase, then the price goes up. If investors become more confident about a given profit prediction, then stock prices will rise further. When stock prices go up, there is a reinforcing effect on investor confidence, and stocks move up even more.
The existence of these positive feedback loops means stock prices move in waves. Stock market booms are generally slow and long-lasting, as the reinforcing effects of higher expected profits and confidence build on each other gradually.
Stock market busts are generally shorter-lasting but more intense because the truth about profits and risks are often revealed very suddenly. Investors know that maintaining optimistic beliefs while everyone else becomes pessimistic means they will be left holding stocks that others value less.
At the end of the day, the stock market is necessarily tied to economic fundamentals. The value of a stock is the expected value of the company's profits, discounted at some interest rate that includes a risk premium. Humans can make systematic mistakes about future profits and risk premia, but ultimately, those mistakes will be revealed.
How does government move the stock market?
The stock-price math taught in business schools tells us that the value of a stock boils down to the risk-free rate of interest you can earn on government debt, the company's expected profits, and the current risk premium added to the risk-free interest rate.
So, how can government move the stock market? By choosing policies that move the three inputs. Start with the Federal Reserve. The Fed controls short-term, risk-free interest rates directly. In times of financial crisis, the Fed also intervenes in other ways that impact expected profits and certainty.
One of the most poignant recent lessons about short-term interest rates and the stock market comes from 2018. In late summer of that year, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell began to signal the Fed's intention to "normalize" interest rates, meaning allow rates (adjusted for inflation) to increase back toward historical averages. Powell said clearly that interest rates were well-below neutral in early October.
The stock market plunged between October and December of 2018, erasing most of the gains registered over the preceding 2 years.
In late 2018, Fed officials began to speak publicly about how they may have overstated the need for future interest rate increases. By December, the Fed had walked back plans for further planned increases. Finally, in 2019, the Fed began cutting rates. The stock market applauded the action, regained its losses, and grew in 2019—achieving new highs at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.
The Fed proved that it could boost the stock market and provide economic stimulus by keeping interest rates low. But this was not a newly discovered magic bullet. Fed officials got their jobs because they got good grades in the business and economics classes where the basic stock market math is taught.
Cutting interest rates, however, while the U.S. economy was still expanding in 2019 was an unusual policy move. Historically, the fear was that keeping interest rates too low for too long will lead to an overheated economy and inflation.
One possibility is that the noninflationary (or "equilibrium") short-term interest rate has decreased in recent years. Historically, the Fed's short-term interest rate target was maybe 2 percent or 3 percent, adjusted for inflation. Historically, keeping rates below that target for a prolonged period did lead to higher inflation.
The fact that inflation did not surge after the 2019 interest rate cuts suggests that the equilibrium interest rate the Fed should target has changed. Indeed, in a recent speech, Powell focused on how the lack of inflation is a key indicator that interest rates are not too low.
Economists believe that changes in the economy from a variety of factors—globalization, declining productivity, and the aging of the population—may have pushed the optimal short-term interest rate down. In this view, the Fed has just responded to the new economic environment and cut interest rates to keep the economy on track.
I will come back to this "new equilibrium interest rate" view of the stock market below, but first, we need to think about how other types of government policies also move the stock market.
In addition to what the Fed can do, the legislative and executive branches can affect stock prices directly through regulatory actions and tax policy, or indirectly through spending and deficit policies.
The easier plays—regulatory actions and tax policy that directly boost stock values—have been the clear choice of stock-market-first advocates. There are no great insights here, and one does not need an Ivy League business school degree to read the playbook on using such policies to increase stock prices:
- If we allow businesses to rely on cheaper, more environmentally destructive production techniques, then profits will go up.
- If we allow businesses to cut wages and benefits without regard for worker rights and well-being, then profits will go up.
- If we allow competition-destroying merger activity, then profits will go up (for the firms that survive) and overall industry profits will be higher.
- If we reduce taxes on corporate profits, then the profits available to pay out dividends to investors will go up.
The question is not whether these policies can increase profits and stock prices, at least temporarily. They can. But adopting these policies does raise two other questions.
The first question is whether regulatory and tax policies lead to a permanent increase in profit levels or, even better, to a higher growth rate for profits. If the effects on profits are temporary, then these actions are fueling a stock market bubble because profit expectations will rise and then fall.
And even if the increases in profits are permanent, we need to ask whether the higher profits represent an efficient reallocation of the nation's resources. If we are just transferring more of our national wealth to business owners, then are you better-off? Your 401(k) investments may be increasing in value, but at the expense of what else that is important to your economic health and well-being?
Are we in a stock market bubble?
The first question we should ask about stock-market-first government policy actions is whether we are creating a stronger economy or just generating wild swings in the stock market. If policy is fueling booms and busts, then we may be at or near the top of one of those cycles.
Distinguishing short- and long-run movements in stock prices is easy in hindsight. Stock market bubbles are declared to have happened after the bubble bursts, not while the bubble is expanding. But what we can do, at a point in time, is to look at the relationship between stock prices and the underlying economy in which everyone operates.
The famed stock market value investor Warren Buffet has long advocated that we simply look at the ratio of overall stock market value to the size of the economy, and, by that measure, the stock market is grossly overvalued.
More technical valuation measures are based on the three principles above—government interest rates, expected profits, and the risk premium—but those more technical measures also indicate stock market values are at historical peaks.
In short, even if you believe that the policy-driven increase in profits will persist and you believe the Fed will keep rates low, then stocks still are at the top of their historical range. The imbalance between economic fundamentals and stock prices is already here.
It might be the case that there is a new stock market math at play, and it goes hand-in-hand with the new equilibrium interest rate view. Inflation is not rising, which suggests that the economy is not overheated, and stock prices simply reflect the new equilibrium interest rate.
The lack of inflation is a mystery to the Fed and economists generally, but that may be because we are looking for inflation as the product of a "demand-pull" effect. The idea of demand-pull in this context just means that higher stock market wealth increases demand for goods and services and that bids up prices in an otherwise fully employed economy.
We are indeed collectively spending more in recent years, and that has led to increased employment. But inflation is not budging. Why?
There is another way to look at inflation, known as the cost-push effect. The term cost-push was coined in the 1970s, when unions and oil prices seemed to "push" businesses to raise their output prices to remain profitable.
What may be happening in recent years is that cost-push inflation is working in reverse. Government undertakes regulatory and tax policies that lower costs for all businesses, and businesses do what they teach in business school—they compete on price.
If firms operating in the same competitive market all experience the same cost decrease, then they will eventually lower the prices of the goods and services they are selling to maintain their market shares. The only possible exception to the rule is industries where there is a lack of competition—industries where government has not enforced antitrust laws.
But in general, an economist looking at recent regulatory and tax policy changes might wonder why someone would have ever expected a long-run increase in profits. If every business in a specific market is forced to follow the same regulations and pay the same taxes, then the costs are mostly just passed forward to consumers. That process works in reverse as well. Cutting the same costs for all businesses means lower prices or, at least, less pressure on further price increases.
But the goods are not truly cheaper. We consumers just stopped paying for things such as environmental protection and decent wages and meaningful health benefits for the workers at those firms.
The lower interest rates needed to prop up the inflated stock market are also impacting retirees and those saving for retirement. If you have practiced good financial hygiene and kept some of your savings in fixed-interest bonds, then you are earning a lot less on that part of your portfolio.
There is no free lunch, but sometimes, the price is hidden.
If cost-push forces are really what is keeping inflation low in recent years, as seems likely, then the path to resolution of an overvalued stock market is through profits and the risk premium. When businesses compete away the reduced costs handed to them through regulatory and tax policies, the temporary boost in profits disappears.
And when the temporary boost to profits disappears, we are left staring at an overvalued stock market, with interest rates already close to zero, wondering when the bubble will burst. The only solutions are even more regulatory action or tax cuts and even lower interest rates.
If that sounds familiar, it is because you have been hearing about the need for more deregulation and lower taxes from stock-market-first advocates for decades. But lest you worry, the true believers in stock-market-first will tell you the next regulatory or tax fix is going to take care of everything, once and for all.
And yes—the stock-market-first agenda sounds more like a drug problem than good economic policy.
So, how should government move the stock market?
Even if stock-market-first policies do lead to some real economic growth, the follow-up questions we should ask are whether those policies are worth the cost and whether there is an alternative.
There are two ways that government policy can spur economic growth. The first is to engineer increases in stock prices using deregulation and corporate tax cuts, and we know that is possible. It even feels good on the way up. If we make stock owners wealthier, then they spend more, and the additional spending leads to increased employment and income for everyone else.
Giving up things such as environmental protections, decent wages, or a fair rate of return on risk-free retirement savings might just be the price of continued economic growth. But that higher growth does not mean you are personally better-off. You may reap some of the benefits of stock-market-first economics through a higher 401(k) balance, but you also pay the costs.
There is an alternative, but it requires understanding that although we can achieve the same or even better economic growth and employment, the nature of that growth will be different. The alternative would be more equitable, because we would not be relying on ever-increasing wealth inequality to grow the economy.
In addition to having regulatory and tax levers, government can grow an economy by investing or supporting investment in people, places, and things. Those sorts of investments can change one of the major underlying drivers of the "new" equilibrium interest rate environment by boosting productivity growth.
A slowdown in economic growth is not inevitable, but we need to realize that the types of investments we need to grow our economy are simply not seen as immediately profitable to people who already have a lot of money. If companies were already making these investments, then we would not be wondering why we are failing to grow an economy with so much obvious potential. Specifically:
- We need to invest in people so that more people are qualified to work at the jobs the rest of us truly value in a technologically evolving world.
- We need to invest in places, which means both in direct public infrastructure and in programs to direct loans away from big business and toward small businesses and private ownership of homes.
- We need to invest in things, especially technology. And we need to understand that much of the technology we see today began in universities and large public research organizations and, beyond that, often involves private and public partnerships.
- We need to cooperate in new ways on healthcare, retirement programs, and income security. Government created these sorts of cooperative programs because private markets failed to give us what we needed, and we should focus on making those programs better, not defunding and destroying them.
- We need to stop listening when some politicians say that taxes are a destructive force for innovation and growth. We need to hear instead that the income generated from a stronger and more productive economy is, in part, a return on our public investments, and failure to tax that income is the same as foregoing our collective rights to those investments.
Most importantly, we need to get past the fundamental principle espoused by stock-market-first advocates. They want you to believe that anything of value to the rest of us must involve people who already have a lot of money making even more money using that money.
Sound economic policies will boost the stock market because higher productivity means higher wages and higher profits. More importantly, the boost will be permanent and consistent with economic fundamentals. Low interest rates are not needed to prevent a stock market collapse.
Consider policies that did not exist when our oldest voters were born. Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, the GI Bill, the national highway system, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, support for higher education, and research by the National Institutes of Health. Those policies made us better-off because we worked together, made investments, and reaped the rewards.
And acknowledge that every one of those policies was subject to the same screams about excessive government that stock-market-first advocates regularly employ. But voters chose not to listen. They knew better.
And policy today? The imagination of stock-market-first politicians has become limited to undoing the environmental and workplace safeguards we value and lowering taxes to boost profits and the stock market.
History and logic tell us that sort of game can indeed ratchet the stock market to new levels, but it does not change long-term growth rates. History and logic tell us there is a cost to supporting inflated stock prices. Just look most recently at the costs to our economy of the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Or the costs evident in our current pandemic economy.
The Fed is running out of levers to accommodate policy failures and prop up inflated stock values. Interest rates are already effectively zero, and the Fed is now relying on interventions that directly target the problems generated in the name of free market efficiency.
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and resulting recession, the Fed was forced to guarantee the excessive debt issued by corporations during the preceding stock market run-up. Much of that debt was issued by corporations to buy their own stock and further inflate stock prices during the boom.
Had the Fed not stepped in to guarantee corporate debt, the risk premium would have shot up because investors would rightly fear a surge in bankruptcies, stocks would have tanked, and the economy would have imploded.
Lowering interest rates and guaranteeing corporate debt was the right thing to do, given the situation the Fed was facing.
The point here is that the Fed should have never faced that situation. The situation was created by the disastrous regulatory and tax policies put in place before the pandemic. The situation stemmed from choices made by stock-market-first politicians. The situation was not inevitable.
And what about the future? Current stock prices are out of sync with economic fundamentals. But there is not a lot more the Fed can do, beyond buying corporate stock directly.
The pressure to reconcile even current stock values with future profits in our low-growth economy suggests that corporate owners will lobby to further increase their share of the pie, lest the imbalance between actual and expected profits be revealed.
The pressure from economic fundamentals means corporate owners will lobby for more ways to lower your wages and benefits. That means your Social Security and Medicare are less secure. That means your health insurance will cost you more. That means your safe retirement income will be even lower.
The costs to you of stock-market-first U.S. economic policies
Advocates of stock-market-first economic policies would have you focus on new stock market highs as proof they know what is best for the economy. Specifically:
- They want you to overlook the fact that they are using government to get an increasingly larger share of the economic pie for themselves.
- They want you to ignore that their policies are inhibiting overall growth in the very economic pie from which they are taking that bigger share.
- They want you to ignore that government-organized economic cooperation is often the key to real economic growth shared equitably between workers and business owners.
- They want you to ignore that the absence of worker bargaining power is gutting the middle class.
- They want you to ignore that failure to enforce antitrust laws has led to a lack of competition in key industries.
- They want you to ignore that the impending technological change associated with automation is likely to make cooperation between government, business, and labor even more important in the years ahead.
And they want you to ignore that improved working conditions, higher wages, better retirement and health security, and a cleaner environment were choices that you voted for all your life because they have real value.
Stock-market-first advocates want you to believe that a booming stock market is always a good thing for you. But you should know now that it depends on how we got there. You should know now that the stock market math will add up one way or another at the end of the day, and the people in charge of the reckoning will not be the ones making sacrifices.
Rising wealth inequality is more than just unfair and discriminatory. Rising wealth inequality is the result of disastrous economic policies that generate unfair and discriminatory outcomes. The beneficiaries of those disastrous economic policies want to sustain that rising wealth inequality for their benefit, not yours.
Even if you do own a 401(k).
-- via my feedly newsfeed