Sunday, June 28, 2020

Jared Bernstein: Hey, Senators! The case for extending Unemployment Insurance benefits is air tight. [feedly]

Hey, Senators! The case for extending Unemployment Insurance benefits is air tight.
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/hey-senators-the-case-for-extending-unemployment-insurance-benefits-is-air-tight/

There's new information out this morning that should be a critical input into ongoing negotiations in the U.S. Senate. Senators are debating whether the economy needs another relief package, and, if so, what should be in it, and this morning's income report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis is virtually yelling what the answer should be.

The report shows that aggregate income—all the wages and profits and interest payments, etc. that go to U.S. households—fell by a large, but expected, 4 percent in May. More importantly, spending was up a robust 8 percent; in an economy that's 70 percent consumer spending, that's an important boost.

But how do you get falling income and higher spending? Is it higher earnings coming out of May's jobs report? Is it people spending out of their savings? There's a bit of both, as pay rose 2.5 percent in May and while the savings rate is still hugely elevated at 23 percent, that's down from April.

But the big story, one that is highly germane to the Senate's negotiations, is that consumer spending is being driven by relief payments in general, and Unemployment Insurance in particular. The figure below, by economist Jay Shambaugh, tells the story. It shows how incomes have actually gone up (the y-axis is trillions of nominal dollars), compared to pre-crisis levels, not due to higher pay, of course, but due to all the transfers, among which Unemployment Insurance is playing a particularly important role.

This focus on UI payments, especially the $600 weekly plus-up that expires at the end of next month, links direct to the Senate negotiations (the plus-up is called "Pandemic Unemployment Compensation" or PUC). Senators are said to be considering different options, but there are those who want to pull back significantly from the $600, or even let it expire, on the basis that it is disincentivizing work as states reopen for business. Such concerns might be arguable if there were enough jobs to go around. But when the unemployment rate is this high, and labor supply far surpasses labor demand, such disincentive effects simply don't bite. In fact, a careful, new study of the most recent hiring patterns "found no evidence to support the view that the temporary $600 supplement, which meant many workers received benefits higher than their wages, drove job losses or slowed rehiring substantially."

In another new study out this morning, economist Josh Bivens shows just how important PUC (and UI payments in general) are to sustaining whatever growth we've got in the current economy. To give you a sense of the magnitudes we're talking about here, Bivens first shows the unprecedented role UI benefits are playing as share of wage income.

Source: Bivens

This morning's income report showed that PUC payments alone, at an annualized rate, came to about $840 billion in May, over 4 percent of total, personal income. Biven than goes on to simulate the impact of extending PUC through the middle of next year, finding that it would increase GDP by 3.7 percent and jobs by over 5 million. Of course, those results would be sacrificed if PUC were allowed to expire. As Bivens puts it: "This estimate shows us how enormously important expanded unemployment insurance over the next year will be to aggregate demand, as new job openings are all but guaranteed to be fewer than jobless potential workers over that time, so any incentive effect in keeping workers from searching actively for work will not be the binding constraint on the economy's growth."

In fact, economist Jason Furman make precisely this point in a similar analysis from the flip side of Bivens, estimating the impact of eliminating PUC on GDP and jobs. His results, shown below, estimate that the PUC repeal would lower GDP by almost 3 percent by the end of this year, and cost millions of jobs through 2022.

Source: Furman

These are not unusual or the least bit unexpected results. With the economy still so demand constrained, due to not just the extent of coronavirus but its recent increase in "hot spots" across the country, consumers lack the confidence and employees lack the paychecks to get back to anything approaching normal levels of commerce. It doesn't matter a whit how much government officials exhort people to get out and spend. As long as there's no vaccine and we're so deeply lacking in leadership around controlling the spread of the virus, jobs, spending, and demand in general will be suppressed.

Senators, take heed! In this climate, it would be political and economic malpractice not to expand UI benefits. The data and analysis could not be clearer: people's economic circumstances and outlook are still suffering from the pandemic-induced recession and they thus still need considerable assistance as we haltingly make our way through the crisis.


 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Tim Taylor: Updating GDP: Human Capital, Nonmarket Work, Inequality, Health Care, and More [feedly]

This article by Tim Taylor touches on critical measurement issues for socialist economic theory--indeed for economic theory in general: How to account for the value of non-market labor, education, and intangibles.

Updating GDP: Human Capital, Nonmarket Work, Inequality, Health Care, and More

https://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2020/06/gdp-whats-next-for-government-statistics.html

No one who knows anything about gross domestic product, including economists and government statisticians, thinks it is a broad measure of social well-being. Moreover, economists at the Bureau of Economic Analysis don't want the job of coming up with a broad measure, either.  In the June 2020 issue of the Survey of Current BusinessJ. Steven Landefeld, Shaunda Villones, and Alyssa Holdren provide an essay on "GDP and Beyond: Priorities and Plans." They write: "BEA economists use market prices and volumes to measure GDP and other economic aggregates and have no special expertise in deciding the appropriate weights to combine indicators such as education and life expectancy with gross national income per capita." 

It seems sensible to me to have the government focused on collecting a wide array of statistics across a full range of economic and social indicators, and then having outsiders debate the ultimate meaning of "better off." But as Landefeld, Villones and Holdren point point out, along with a set of outside commenters, there are plenty of challenges even when just sticking to what can be measure or at least estimated based on prices and quantities. Here are some comments and thoughts on what BEA lists as its top priorities moving forward. 

Human Capital

We have known for a long time that investments in education, skills, and experience lead to greater "human capital" which pays off for the economy as a whole. But when we discuss "investment" as a part of GDP, we remain focused on purchases by firms of plant, equipment, and software along with intangible investment from corporate R&D. Landefeld, Villones and Holdren mention one striking estimate that one estimate comparing the accumulated stock of human capital with the accumulated stock of physical capital, the stock of human capital may be worth 16 times as much. 
But there's a real challenge here in measuring human capital investment. It can be estimated in various ways, which don't agree. In addition, it seems  plausible me that human capital in the form of education is a mixture of a consumption good and an investment good, which complicates matters further. Here's one of the outside comments from Lisa Lynch:
There are three main approaches for measuring human capital investment for the purpose of national accounts: Kendrick's (1976) Cost-based approach; the Lifetime income approach as developed by Jorgenson and Fraumeni (1989 and on); and the Indicators approach as detailed by the OECD 2011 (and updated every two years since), and Barro and Lee 2013. Measuring investment in human capital based on costs typically includes spending on schools, employee training costs, opportunity cost of time acquiring human capital, and a range of expenditures on others items such as libraries, radio, TV, books and other items having human capital value. The Jorgenson-Fraumeni (J-F) Lifetime income stream focuses on the present value of the return to formal education only. Finally, the Indicators approach pulls together a range of metrics such as adult literacy, school enrollments rate, average years of schooling, and the percentage of highly qualified workers to capture differences across countries and time in human capital investment.

In principal the Cost-based and Lifetime income approaches should produce values equal to each other. In practice they do not. The Lifetime-income approach produces estimates of investments in human capital 6 to almost 10 times greater than the Cost-Based approach. ... 
Household production

A standard concern about GDP is that it doesn't measure household production that is not sold on the market, and standard estimates are that including estimates of the value of household production would raise GDP by about one-quarter.  But unpaid economic output purely for household production is only the start of the issues here. What about tasks like elder care, volunteering, and pumping your own gas or bagging your own groceries? Here's another comment from Lisa Lynch
While there has been significant work done by the BEA to develop a satellite account for household production I would urge the BEA to add additional non-labor market activities that take place outside the home but meet the threshold of "Would someone pay another person (a "third person" from outside the home) to perform the activity?" The first such activity is elder care. We know from the American Time Use Survey (2014–15) that approximately 16.2% of the U.S. population provides eldercare—unpaid care for someone over the age of 65 with a condition related to aging. Almost all of this care takes place outside the home and on an "average" day, 26 percent of unpaid eldercare providers spend an average of 3 hours in eldercare activities. With an aging population this is a growing dimension of household production that should receive increasing attention in household satellite accounts.

A second area of non-labor market work that is not captured in our satellite accounts is volunteering. From the 2015 American Time Use Survey we learn that 9% of those over age 64 volunteer on an average day. For all those volunteers over age 25 they spent an average of 2.25 hours in this activity. Examples of volunteering include administrative and support activities, social service and care activities, and indoor and outdoor maintenance, building, and clean‐up activities. While not all aspects of volunteering may meet the standard of paying another person for this work, much of it would.

A third area of non-labor market work includes the "free labor" facilitated by IT. Examples of this include ATM bank transactions, self-service work of pumping gas and bagging groceries, online airline ticket purchase and check-in, "self-service" baggage tagging/drop, self-service keyless check-in and checkout at hotels, and ordering, paying and self-pickup of meals. None of these economic activities are captured in our national accounts today even though we still have employees who are paid to do this work.
Distribution of Income

When thinking about growth of the overall economy as measured by GDP, and evaluating its costs and benefits, it seems useful to know what distribution of income is happening as well. But measuring income distribution in a way that links up directly to GDP is harder than it may sound at first. It's common for measures of income distribution to focus on personal income, using either survey data or administrative data (like tax returns). But such measures are mostly limited to personal income, which is only about half of GDP. Could measures of distribution be linked to overall GDP? In his comment, Angus Deaton sounds a cautionary note about this agenda: 
Piketty, Saez and Zucman (PSZ) have done a great service by calculating a set of distributionally disaggregated national accounts for the United States. The basic idea is irresistible. Yet these first attempts have raised many serious difficulties that were not apparent at first. Most immediately, only about half of national income appears on individual tax returns. Allocating from tax returns is hard enough, because tax units are neither individuals nor households, but allocating the other half of national income is an immensely more difficult task, requiring assumptions that are rarely well supported by evidence, and often seem arbitrary. Because distribution is such a controversial topic, these assumptions leave plenty of scope for politically-biased challenges, in which each commentator can choose their own alternatives and get almost any result they choose, inequality is increasing, inequality is not increasing, and everything in between. It is surely not good practice for statistical offices, as opposed to researchers, to have to make such deeply controversial choices. My own preference would be to give up on the bigger task of measuring the distribution of national income, and to stick to the feasible, but still difficult, challenge of allocating personal income, both before and after taxes and benefits.
Health Care

The usual idea of measuring GDP is to look at a product, and then to measure the price times the quantity produced. For products like steel or oil or cars or pizzas or haircuts, this works pretty well. But health care is an ever-evolving mixture of inputs, and the specific output that is being purchases is hard to measure.  Thus, a standard way of measuring "output" in health care has been to look at total spending on healthcare--which is of course a measure of inputs, not of outputs like reducing cases or morbidity or deaths from diabetes or cancer. Health care expenditures are a huge and growing, headed for one-fifth of all GDP. But there is often some skepticism over whether the rise in health care spending as a share of GDP represents a rise in outputs--like improved health. In his comment, Angus Deaton puts the point with some force: 
The American healthcare system poses one of the most serious challenges to national income measurement, and plays into its well-known weaknesses. Like other services, it is measured, not by its output in terms of its contribution to health, but by its inputs, such as the number of procedures, doctor visits, or prescriptions sold. I do not know how to do better than this, but I do know that these numbers, currently about 18 percent of GDP, vastly overstate any imaginable output measure. Americans have lower life expectancy and higher morbidity than do other rich countries, who spend much less. To take a concrete example, Switzerland, which has the world's second most expensive healthcare system, spends only 12 percent of its GDP. So one measure of the value of the output of American healthcare is 12 percent of American GDP, which would mean that the sector has negative value added of a trillion dollars a year; to balance the accounts, this trillion dollars would show up as poll tax on consumers, $8,700 per head, which is being transferred as a tribute, or ransom, from consumers to healthcare providers. Of course, I am not suggesting that the BEA adopt this calculation, but it illustrates the dangers of not having a measure of output and of accepting valuation at cost.
The paper and comments raise a variety of other issues.  Those who want still more detail might head for a "Symposium: Are Measures of Economic Growth Biased?" in the Spring 2017 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (where I work as Managing Editor): 

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Expanded unemployment insurance continues to be a crucial lifeline for millions of workers: See updated state unemployment data [feedly]

Expanded unemployment insurance continues to be a crucial lifeline for millions of workers: See updated state unemployment data
https://www.epi.org/blog/expanded-unemployment-insurance-continues-to-be-a-crucial-lifeline-for-millions-of-workers-see-updated-state-unemployment-data/

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released the most recent unemployment insurance (UI) claims data yesterday, showing that another 1.5 million people filed for regular UI benefits last week (not seasonally adjusted) and 0.7 million for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the new program for workers who aren't eligible for regular UI, such as gig workers. As we look at the aggregate measures of economic harm, it is important to remember that this recession is deepening racial inequalities. Black communities are suffering more from this pandemic—both physically and economically—as a result of, and in addition to, systemic racism and violence. Both Black and Hispanic workers are more likely than white workers to be worried about exposure to coronavirus at work and bringing it home to their families. These communities, and Black women in particular, should be centered in policy solutions.

As of last week, more than one in five people in the workforce are either receiving or have recently applied for unemployment benefits—regular or PUA. These benefits are a critical lifeline that help workers make ends meet while practicing the necessary social distancing to stop the spread of coronavirus. In fact, the $600 increase in weekly UI benefits was likely the most effective measure in the CARES Act for insulating workers from economic harm and jumpstarting an eventual economic rebound, and it should be extended past July.

To be clear, our top priority right now should be protecting the health and safety of workers and our broader communities. To accomplish this, we should be paying workers to stay home when possible, whether that means working from home some or all of the time, using paid leave, or claiming UI benefits. When workers are providing absolutely essential services, they must have access to adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) and paid sick leave.

Figure A and Table 1 show the total number of workers who either made it through at least the first round of regular state UI processing as of June 13 (these are known as "continued" claims) or filed initial regular UI claims during the week of June 20. Four states had more than one million workers either receiving regular UI benefits or waiting for their claim to be approved: California (3.1 million), New York (1.8 million), Texas (1.3 million), and Florida (1.1 million). Nineteen additional states had more than a quarter million workers receiving or awaiting benefits.

While the largest U.S. states unsurprisingly have the highest numbers of UI claimants, some smaller states have larger shares of the workforce filing for unemployment. Figure A and Table 1 also show the numbers of workers in each state who are receiving or waiting for regular UI benefits as a share of the February 2020 labor force. We use February as a baseline since it predates the effects of the pandemic on the labor market. In nine states and the District of Columbia, more than one in seven workers are receiving regular UI benefits or waiting on their claim to be approved: Hawaii (21.0%), Nevada (19.3%), Oregon (19.0%), New York (18.3%), District of Columbia (17.9%), California (15.9%), Massachusetts (15.4%), Georgia (15.3%), Louisiana (15.0%), and Alaska (14.8%).

Figure A

Figure A and Table 2 show the total number of workers who either made it through at least the first round of PUA processing—the new federal program that extends unemployment compensation to workers who are not eligible for regular UI but are out of work due to the pandemic—by June 6 or filed initial PUA claims during the weeks of June 13 or June 20. We do not sum the PUA claims with regular UI claims because some states have misreported PUA claims in their initial claims data, leading to potential double counting.1

As of last week, DOL reported that over 12 million workers across 46 states and the District of Columbia are receiving or waiting on a decision for PUA benefits, which underscores the importance of extending benefits to those who would otherwise not have been eligible. Five states have at least a million workers in this category: Arizona (1.6 million), California (1.5 million), Pennsylvania (1.4 million), Michigan (1.1 million), and New York (1.1 million). Four states still have not reported any PUA claims: Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, and West Virginia.

To mitigate the economic harm to workers, Congress should pass another federal relief and recovery package that includes worker protections, investments in our democracy, resources for coronavirus testing and contact tracing (which is necessary to reopen the economy), and an extension of the across-the-board $600 increase in weekly unemployment benefits well past its expiration at the end of July.

The package should also include substantial aid to state and local governments, so that they can invest in the services that will allow the economy to recover, particularly public health and education. Without this aid, a prolonged depression is inevitable and 5.3 million workers would likely lose their jobs by the end of 2021, especially if state and local governments make the same budget and employmentcuts that slowed the recovery after the Great Recession. At the same time, policymakers should prioritize long-overdue overhauls of federal labor law and continue to strengthen wage standards that protect workers and help boost consumer demand.

1. Unless otherwise noted, the numbers in this blog post are the ones reported by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), which they receive from the state agencies that administer UI. While DOL is asking states to report regular UI claims and PUA claims separately, many states are also including some or all PUA claimants in their reported regular UI claims. As state agencies work to get these new programs up and running, there will likely continue to be some misreporting. Since the number of UI claims is one of the most up-to-date measures of labor market weakness and access to benefits, we will still be analyzing it each week as reported by DOL, but we ask that you keep these caveats in mind when interpreting the data.

Table 1
Table 2

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Saturday, June 27, 2020

Enlighten Radio:Jazz Divas: Saturday Enlighten Radio

The Red Caboose has sent you a link to a blog:



Blog: Enlighten Radio
Post: Jazz Divas: Saturday Enlighten Radio
Link: https://www.enlightenradio.org/2020/06/jazz-divas-saturday-enlighten-radio.html

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Thursday, June 25, 2020

IMF:Financial Conditions Have Eased, but Insolvencies Loom Large [feedly]

On balance, a pessimistic outlook from the IMF

Financial Conditions Have Eased, but Insolvencies Loom Large

https://blogs.imf.org/2020/06/25/financial-conditions-have-eased-but-insolvencies-loom-large/

By Tobias Adrian and Fabio Natalucci

Amid the human tragedy and economic recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent surge in risk appetite in financial markets has caught analysts' attention. After sharp declines in February and March, equity markets have rallied back, in some cases to close to their January levels, while credit spreads have narrowed significantly, even for riskier investments. This has created an apparent disconnect between financial markets and economic prospects. Investors seem to be betting that lasting strong support from central banks will sustain a quick recovery even as economic data point to a deeper-than-expected downturn, as shown in the June 2020 World Economic Outlook Update.

Tug of war

In the newest Global Financial Stability Update, we analyze the tug of war between the real economy and financial markets and the risks involved. With huge uncertainties about economic outlook and investors highly sensitive to COVID-19 developments, pre-existing financial vulnerabilities are being exposed by the pandemic. Debt levels are rising, and potential credit losses resulting from insolvencies could test bank resilience in some countries. Some emerging market and frontier economies are facing refinancing risks, and lower-rated countries have started to regain access to markets only slowly.

Major central banks around the world have contributed to the substantial easing of financial conditions via interest rate cuts and a balance sheet expansion of over $6 trillion, including asset purchases, FX swap lines, and credit & liquidity facilities. These swift and unprecedented actions by central banks have restored confidence and boosted investor risk taking, including in emerging markets, where asset purchases have been deployed for the first time. Risky asset prices have rebounded since the precipitous fall early in the year, while benchmark interest rates have fallen. With the easing of global financial conditions, risk appetite has retuned also to emerging markets. Aggregate portfolio outflows have stabilized, and some countries have experienced some modest inflows again. In credit markets, spreads of investment-grade companies in advanced economies are currently quite contained, contrary to the sharp widening seen during previous large economic shocks. Spreads have also narrowed significantly in emerging countries, albeit less so in frontier markets. On net, financial stability risks in the short term are little changed since the last Global Financial Stability Report, as prompt and bold actions by policymakers have helped cushion the impact of the pandemic on the global economic outlook.

A disconnect has emerged

The disconnect between financial markets and the real economy can be illustrated by the recent decoupling between the soaring U.S. equity markets and plunging consumer confidence (two indicators that have historically trended together), raising questions about the rally's sustainability if not for the boost provided by central banks.

This divergence raises the specter of another correction in risk asset prices should investors' attitude change, posing a threat to the recovery. So-called bear equity market rallies have occurred in the past during periods of significant economic pressures, only to unwind swiftly.

What triggers?

A number of developments could trigger a decline in risk assets' prices. The recession could be deeper and longer than currently anticipated by investors. There could be a second wave of infections, with ensuing containment measures. Geopolitical tensions or broadening social unrest in response to rising global inequality could lead to a reversal in investor sentiment. Finally, expectations about the extent of central banks' support could turn out to be too optimistic, leading investors to reassess their appetite and pricing of risk.

Such a repricing, especially if amplified by financial vulnerabilities, could result in a sharp tightening in financial conditions, thus constraining the flow of credit to the economy. Financial stress could worsen an already unprecedented economic recession, making a recovery even more challenging.

Pre-existing vulnerabilities

Pre-existing financial vulnerabilities are being laid bare by the pandemic. First, in advanced and emerging market economies alike, corporate and household debt burdens could become unmanageable in a severe economic contraction. Aggregate corporate debt has been rising over several years, and it now stands at historically high levels relative to GDP. Household debt has also increased in many economies, some of which now face an extremely sharp economic slowdown. The deterioration in economic fundamentals has already led to a corporate ratings downgrade, and there is a risk of a broader impact on the solvency of companies and households.

Second, the realization of credit events will test the resilience of the banking sector as they assess how governments' support for households and companies translates into borrowers repaying their loans. Some banks have started to prepare for this process, and expectation of further pressure on their profitability is reflected in the declining prices of their stocks.

Third, nonbank financial companies could also be affected. These entities now play a greater role in the financial system than before. But since their appetite for continuing to provide credit during a deep downturn is untested, they could end up being an amplifier of stress. For example, a sharp correction in asset prices could lead to large outflows in investment funds (as seen early in the year), possibly triggering fire sales of assets.

Fourth, while conditions have eased in general, risks remain for some emerging and frontier markets that face more urgent refinancing needs. Their debts' rollover will be more costly should financial conditions suddenly tighten. Some of these countries also have low levels of reserves, making it harder to manage portfolio outflows. Credit-rating downgrades could worsen this dynamic.

Mind the trade-offs

Countries need to strike the right balance between competing priorities in their response to the pandemic, being mindful of the trade-offs and implications of continuing to support the economy while preserving financial stability.

The unprecedented use of unconventional tools has undoubtedly cushioned the pandemic's blow to the global economy and lessened the immediate danger to the global financial system—the intended objective of policy actions. However, policymakers need to be attentive to possible unintended consequences, such as a continued buildup of financial vulnerabilities in an environment of easy financial conditions. The expectation of continued support from central banks could turn already stretched asset valuations into vulnerabilities—particularly in a context of financial systems and corporate sectors that are depleting their buffers during the pandemic. Once the recovery is underway, policymakers should urgently address vulnerabilities that could sow the seeds of future problems and put growth at risk down the road.


 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Coronavirus Is Not Killing Globalisation [feedly]

A not unreasonable take on the direction of globalization -- an alternative to those predicting a retreat.

Coronavirus Is Not Killing Globalisation

https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/25/06/2020/coronavirus-not-killing-globalisation


Sam Pryke examines the view that the Covid19 pandemic is further weakening globalisation and finds that this is not the case.  In some respects, it is extending it.

Globalisation was in trouble for some time before Covid19 according to commentators.  The last 3 months have apparently seen it's impetus further weakened.  But, although the current pandemic may see aspects of global interconnection reconfigured, talk of its demise is much exaggerated.

Pundits have engaged in talk of 'de-globalisation', even 'the end of globalisation' since 2016, whilst gloomy forecasts, often from supporters of free markets, go all the way back to the financial crash of 2008.  That was termed by some, notably the then British PM Gordon Brown, as the first crisis of globalisation.  Analysts argued that the failure of the experiment in free market capitalism, one that had come to dominate government policy for 3 decades through the ideological guise that 'there is no alternative', would give rise to various forms of protectionism.  This didn't really happen.  There was no systematic attempt by governments to pull apart the integration of economies.  Instead, globalisation on most, if not all, measures regained the levels attained in 2007 by 2011/12 - and then grew further.  International trade is the most commonly used indicator of globalisation.  In 2018, more goods were traded around the world than ever before.  The last DHL survey found that in 2017 the volume of worldwide flows of finance, commodities, information and people, therefore a more rounded assessment, were at their highest ever levels. 

Why then a chorus of voices saying that globalisation is in retreat?  Central has been the rise in nationalist (or populist) movements and leaders: BREXIT and then Johnson in Britain, Trump in the USA, Xi Jinping in China, Bolsonaro in Brazil and Modi in India are five of the best known examples.  Of these leaders, only Trump is explicit in his rejection of globalisation – 'Americanism not globalism' was a campaign cry as he announced his candidacy for the Republican Party in 2015 – and has backed his words by tariffs on more than $360bn (£268bn) of Chinese goods.  China has retaliated with tariffs on more than $110bn of US products.  But all are sceptical of aspects of globalisation, certainly any perceived diminution of state power.  Besides nationalism, commentators have also pointed to de-globalisation through the 'reshoring' of investments of multinational companies and the implications of robots fitted with artificial intelligence - specifically, their potential to do the work that large numbers of immigrants do because domestic populations won't.

If received opinion was that globalisation was already in trouble, the spread of Covid19 has prompted numerous claims that the pandemic will do further long term damage.  The gist of some comment has been to underline what is obvious: the effort to prevent the spread of the virus, something that travelled through global networks, has reasserted the enormous power of nation states.  Leaving aside simplistic dichotomies between states and global actors (e.g. multinational companies) and arenas (world markets), negative state power has been evident in their ability to prevent people from moving between and within countries for work or leisure, and to close down sections of economies.  And in their positive power to pay workers whose employers have been compulsorily closed, to boost domestic economies through massive financial injections and to provide health care for those who have contracted the virus.  In the USA, the federal state tried to stop some companies, notably the PPE manufacturer 3M, from exporting face masks.   This exceptional governance and policy (that has of course resulted in $ trillions of additional debt) has underlined what has always been obvious: states have the real power in the world and businesses have always been reliant on them – especially at times of crisis.  Books of yesteryear that depicted a 'hyperglobalist' world like The End of the Nation State and The World is Flat always were rather silly. 

Besides the obvious reality, there are other arguments why coronavirus is 'killing globalisation as we know it'.  Phillipe Legrain, a writer who popularised the case that globalisation has been broadly a positive phenomenon through greater cultural diversity and rising international prosperity, argued at the beginning of March that the pandemic was likely to result in three outcomes.  First, it will see streamlined supply chains – and not just in respect to pharmaceutical and food supply.  About half of world trade is between contractors within supply chains.  The iPhone is only one example.  Apple has simplified it in recent years, but still has 8 suppliers (who in turn outsource) of components to its Taiwanese manufacturer, Foxconn.  Foxconn's workers assemble the mobile device in Shenzhen, China, before distribution worldwide for sale.  Legrain thinks that companies will increasingly seek to shift investment from China (albeit usually elsewhere within Asia) and utilise where possible robotic production within their nation state.  Second, he speculates that the temporary international travel and immigration bans governments have imposed to prevent the spread of the virus will not be removed wholesale if and when the virus is eliminated.  This will have the effect of reducing international business mobility, something that had been projected to rise to $1.3 trillion worth of flights, hotel bookings etc. in 2020.  Instead, executives will continue to use the video communication forms they have turned to during the lockdown.  Third, Legrain says that the pandemic will boost the nationalism and xenophobia referred to above.  As usual, Trump is the best (or worst) example.  Amongst other things, for a time he called Covid19 the 'Chinese virus' in White House press conferences, leading to attacks on American Asians and contributing to what has been termed a new cold war between the USA and China.  A greivance ridden American nationalism is likely to be central to his campaign for re-election in November.

'It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future', can be a sound approach in an unpredictable world.  But it is possible to say certain things about what is likely to happen based on what is occurring now and what took place in the past - even with the uncertainty surrounding Coronavirus, i.e. possible mutations, a vaccine(s) etc.  The following points don't constitute a future global scenario.  But, taken together, they suggest that, whilst the pandemic may give rise to significant change, we need to be sceptical about talk of the death of globalisation now – as we should have been more critical of exaggerated claims of its extent in the past.

First, even the most pessimistic estimates of global trade only predict that it will fall to the levels of 2010.  The integration of national economies into world markets over the last 60 years through the export of goods and services, constituting a third of all economic activity, is highly unlikely to come to an end because of the pandemic.  Attempted withdrawal by governments from the world economy into self-contained national units, autarchy, would see economic Armageddon.  Foreign direct investment will fall sharply but is still estimated to be in excess of $1 trillion this year.  Moreover, FDI tends to be volatile.  It fell by 38 per cent in 2010 but rebounded to above the previous high within four years.  The projected decline this year of 90 per cent in international flights carrying tourists, business travellers and migrants is dramatic, but this is after tremendous growth.  Even with such a decline, the number of flyers will be higher than in 2003. 

Besides the empirical evidence, there is a more basic reason why the pandemic is unlikely to see the end of globalisation.  That's because its driving force, capitalism, is inherently global.  As Karl Marx, the first great analyst of globalisation, put it more than 170 years ago, 'The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie [the capitalist class] over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere'.  Capitalism faces constraints of politics and geography but in their search for profit, capitalists will always seek to evade and reduce them.  Moreover, capitalists are inclined to use the chaos generated by a crisis to remove obstacles to greater income, something referred to as 'disaster capitalism'.  Currently employers, university VCs amongst them, are dispensing with the normal procedures that pertain and cynically forcing through structural changes within their organisations to cut costs.  With the possibilities offered by enhanced video connectivity, it is inevitable that they are simultaneously investigating the possibility of outsourcing services to global locations where wages are lower.  The pandemic is likely to be seen as more than a temporary blip in capitalism's history, but not a great deal more.  One thing that would have surprised Marx is capitalism's resilience.

It is possible that some retrenchment of globalisation will take place through greater regionalisation.  Most external economic activity (trade, investment, travel) has always taken place in geographic areas, regardless of whether there is a strong regional organisation or not.  This year, the majority of trade of Asian countries will take place within others in that region.  Much of the increase in international migration in recent history has taken place because of the numbers of people moving intra Asian.  In the only part of the world where there is an effective regional organisation, Europe, the EU's future was questioned as member states responded individually to the threat of the virus.  Since then, the EU has partially overcome the opposition of key member states to put in place a modest European wide economic stimulus package for the post pandemic period.  The plans afoot to mutualise sovereign debt within the Eurozone would see a considerable advance in economic and monetary union.  Borders are beginning to open again across the Schengen zone.  It could be that post pandemic there's further regional integration in Europe (despite BREXIT), in Asia and elsewhere. 

A different type of reason to be sceptical of over blown claims about the impact of Covid19 is, as indicated, some forms of global communication (or culture) have increased their reach during the pandemic lockdown.  A recent FT survey of the top 100 corporate beneficiaries reveals that the winners (besides a small number of giant pharmaceutical firms involved in vaccines) are home shopping companies, technology firms selling computing, software, games and video and those specialising in e commerce and online payment, i.e. the companies that have been at the cusp of globalisation in recent years.  The companies are predominately American, but 3 Chinese tech firms feature in the top 20.  Predictably, Amazon's market capital increase of $410 billion easily leads Microsoft in second place, making its founder, Jeff Bezos, another $24 billion richer as of mid-April.  The video company that many quickly discovered after the lockdown for work and leisure, Zoom, has seen its stock value exceed the declining worth of the 7 biggest airlines put together.  It is in itself an interesting example of globalisation.  Zoom's owner, Eric Yuan, was born and raised in China, migrating to Silicon Valley, California, where he subsequently launched the business.  His supposed 'dual loyalty' was raised recently when Zoom gave into the demands of Chinese censors to block the accounts of dissidents involved in online commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.  More likely reasons are that that Zoom (along with the equally compliant Apple and Google) seeks access to Chinese markets, and conducts a considerable amount of its R&D in China – further indication that its economy is no longer just a giant low wage assembly plant. 

Finally, the pandemic has seen the globalisation of protest.  This aspect of globalisation has been there since the term became a buzz word in the late 1990s.  Misleadingly, the protestors at the meetings of international leaders were dubbed the 'anti-globalisation' movement by the media.  Their concerns were global inequality, injustice and environmental destruction.  The way in which the virus has disproportionately impacted on poorer and more vulnerable sections of populations – BAME communities in Britain, internal migrants in India, indigenous peoples in Brazil – is only a brutal revelation of those inequalities.  The response of Jair Bolsanaro, the Brazilian president, of 'So what?' when asked about the mounting death toll seemed to sum up the indifference of rulers.  However, the issue which has sparked worldwide protest wasn't directly related to health inequality, but racial injustice: the murder of George Floyd, an unemployed African American, by the white policeman, Derek Chauvin, now charged with murder.  It's not like killings of people of colour by the police haven't taken place in the USA (and elsewhere) before, or that video footage hasn't been circulated on social media.  The Black Lives Matter movement started in 2013 after the acquittal of a police officer for the killing of Trayvon Martin.  What was different this time was the way the lockdown concentrated the attention of a worldwide audience on the video of 8 minutes and 46 seconds as George pleaded for his life as it was snuffed out. 

As is well known, the event triggered not just demonstrations – physical and virtual - of overwhelmingly young, Black and white people across the US but the world, notably in Britain and France. These have had some tangible results in America.  When there were protests over police brutality in America in 1967 they responded by shooting dead 43 people.  The fact that the eyes of the world were trained on the unfolding events today meant that such a state response wasn't possible.  Black Lives Matter protests surely presage future worldwide campaigns over a threat of a far greater magnitude than Covid19, one that really does threaten humanity: global warming. 


 -- via my feedly newsfeed

The coronavirus recession is an opportunity to cancel all U.S. student loan debt [feedly]

The coronavirus recession is an opportunity to cancel all U.S. student loan debt
https://equitablegrowth.org/the-coronavirus-recession-is-an-opportunity-to-cancel-all-u-s-student-loan-debt/

This past March, as a coronavirus relief measure, Congress suspended payments on a lion's share of federally owned student loans for 6 months. When this temporary loan forbearance expires on September 30, it should be extended—permanently.

Many borrowers will not be prepared to begin making payments that soon. But more importantly, none of these student loan borrowers should ever have to make another payment. Cancelling these debts would benefit the U.S. economy, reduce the massive racial wealth divide, and create new opportunities for a generation of college graduates whose hopes the economy has wiped out twice in a dozen years.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES Act places federal student loans in administrative forbearance. That means debtors still owe their full debt but need not make any payments, and no interest will accrue on the loan during this period. It's a good idea to provide relief to the more than 40 million borrowers in our country, many of whom face staggering levels of debts, not to mention helping to sustain an otherwise bleak economy by putting some money in the pockets of consumers.

But this measure doesn't go nearly far enough. This debt should not merely be suspended but cancelled entirely. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, federal student loan debt was crushing the financial and career aspirations of millions of borrowers. With college costs consistently rising faster than inflation and federal grant aid to students not keeping up, the aggregate amount of student debt is more than triple its level just 13 years ago—revealing the systemic nature of the trap created by a system of debtor's education. Debt levels are especially high for Black students, who, 4 years after graduation, have an average obligation of more than $50,000, compared to less than $30,000 for the average White student. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

This higher debt load stems, in part, from the extraordinary gap in wealth between White and Black families. The median White household has 10 times the assets of the average Black family. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2

Receiving less protection from parental wealth, Black students take on higher debt loads. Then, upon entering the labor market as young adults, these students face a harder time paying off their loans in a labor market characterized by racial discrimination. Evidence suggests that student debt has significant social impacts on the most vulnerable borrowers, including impeded family formation and poorer mental health. While student debt has conventionally been thought of as "good debt," the investment generates widely disparate rates of return by race, given the prevailing social framework of unequal housing and Kindergarten through 12th grade education, predatory finance, and labor market discrimination.

The past decade and a half were especially cruel to college graduates. The scarring effect of the Great Recession of 2007–2009 is well-known. Those who graduated during that recession and immediately after will, on average, earn less throughout their careers. Yet, in part because of legislation permitting higher federal student borrowing, overall student borrowing began to skyrocket, surpassing credit card debt for the first time in 2010.

In addition, during the Great Recession, adults were encouraged to wait out the poor labor market and advance their career prospects by furthering their education. Many accrued more student loan debt but not all returned to the workforce with a degree or with the substantial improvement in earnings potential needed to pay off their debt. College costs are continuing to rise faster than overall inflation and federal grant aid is lagging, causing a significant portion of the millennial generation and its immediate successors to pursue adult lives with a millstone around their necks.

Cancelling student debt during the coronavirus recession and going forward with tution-free universities would provide the greatest benefit to those who are suffering the most today. It is well-documented that people of color are contracting and dying from COVID-19 in numbers far out of proportion to their share of the population. Those service-sector jobs that don't require a college degree, where Black workers and immigrants are overrepresented, are also less likely to provide access to insurance coverage or paid sick leave than other sectors. As the saying goes, when America gets a cold, Black people get the flu, but when America gets the flu, Black folks are far more likely to die. The anger we are seeing on the streets of cities across the nation is due not only to the violence imposed on Black Americans by discriminatory law enforcement but also is inextricably intertwined with social, educational, and economic injustices all created by the same society.

The concept of cancelling federal student debt is not a new one. Congress enacted loan forgiveness programs with Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The Bush program, initiated in 2007, focused on teachers and other public servants, as well as those working for nonprofit organizations, but it is exceedingly complex. Since loans became eligible for forgiveness in 2017, fewer than 3,400 borrowers have been approved for forgiveness, though nearly 200,000 have applied.

The Obama plan, which began in 2010, aimed at a far broader swath of borrowers. It enables borrowers to make payments based on a percentage of income. It also allows for cancellation of loans, but only after 20–25 years of payment. It is too early to tell how many borrowers will be aided by the cancellation element of the program, but, as with the Bush program, the Trump administration is showing that much can be done through administrative efforts to undermine this program's intent by making it difficult for borrowers to qualify.

Cancellation of student debt was among the focal points of the recent Democratic Party presidential nomination campaigns. While some presidential candidates supported full student debt cancellation, former Vice President Joe Biden recently made a more modest proposal to forgive all undergraduate loan debt for borrowers who attended public colleges and universities, as well as historically Black colleges and universities, private minority-serving institutions, and for-profit colleges that disproportionately enroll Black students. Only those earning up to $125,000 would be eligible for forgiveness. In addition, Vice President Biden supports $10,000 in across-the-board loan forgiveness as a response to the coronavirus crisis.

There's no question this proposal goes a long way and would cancel the loans of many millions of borrowers. Loan forgiveness, however, must be complete. Partial proposals—whether they limit the amount of cancellation, limit the source of debt to undergraduates, establish income ceilings, or distinguish between public and private institutions—leave us with the same mess of rules, income verification, and administrative burdens plaguing the previous, wildly ineffective attempts and will not protect young Black people seeking to use education as a tool for social mobility. Partial forgiveness would keep in place the unfair burden carried by this generation of borrowers, who were hit hard by higher debt and a double whammy of now-two recessions. Full cancellation is simple. It doesn't pose administrative barriers, and it avoids the stigma associated with means testing.

Moreover, full cancellation leads naturally to what we consider to be the logical next step. Once Congress cancels all student debt, it should not stop there. Just as free public elementary education has effectively been a universal (though unevenly applied) economic right since the 19th century, free higher education should become the standard in the 21st century. Most young people have little choice but to pursue a college education if they wish to raise their socioeconomic standing beyond where they started out in life. And for many, higher education is a necessary step to earning a living wage. Providing tuition-free public higher education to all Americans would eliminate the social and psychological stigma associated with the current system of financial aid and eliminate the need for future generations to carry burdensome debts. 

The coronavirus pandemic, the ensuing recession, and the community response to the police killing of George Floyd and far too many other Black Americans in 2020 and beyond bring into sharp focus the barriers American society places in front of today's generation of Black students—barriers as old as our nation that continue to this day. Student loan debt exacerbates the challenges facing young Black Americans trying to establish careers and begin families. Eliminating this debt would be an important step toward reducing racial and economic inequality in the United States and bringing about the globally competitive, educated workforce that will unleash the country's overall productive potential. As Congress and American voters facing a presidential election think about big solutions to America's very big problems, this is one of the most important and effective actions we can consider.


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