Steve Keen
Last month closed with some far from comforting news about the state of the US housing market (sales and prices still falling), US financial institutions (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in need of rescue), Australian banks (NAB’s 90% write-down of its US CDO portfolio). Then ABS figures showed that retail sales had fallen “unexpectedly” by one percent in June. The recent rally in stock markets came to a sudden end, and after a brief period of renewed confidence, the question “how much worse can “It” get?” is once again doing the rounds.
My answer is: a lot worse. The empirical grounds for this assessment are:
* The ratio of asset prices to consumer prices–or the inflation-adjusted asset price index;
* The ratio of private debt to GDP; and
* Japan
In short, global asset markets have a lot further to fall, and a serious recession–the worst we have experienced since the Great Depression–is inevitable. Let’s first look at what the recent drop in retail sales implies for the economy. Retail sales fell sharply in June, taking most economic commentators by surprise. Even perennial optimists, such as Shane Oliver, were forced to consider that the odds of a recession were “at least 40 percent”.
In reality, the fall in retail sales was inevitable. Spending in Australia has been driven by the biggest debt bubble in our history, and when that bubble peaked, spending had to fall. Since households had taken on a far larger share of debt than business during this bubble, the impact was bound to be seen first in retail sales, rather than investment spending, as I pointed out in November 2006:
“If households reduce their debt levels smoothly, they will have less disposable income to spend and retail sales will slump. If bankruptcies become widespread, the sales downturn will be overlaid with a financial crisis.” (Debtwatch, November 2006, p. 18;
see http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/pre-blog-debtwatch-reports
The suddenness of the turnaround is also no surprise, when you look at the data from a financial point of view. Just as your personal spending each year is the sum of your net income plus the change in your debt, aggregate spending for the economy is the sum of GDP plus the change in debt. As debt rises, the contribution made to spending by any change in debt also rises. Private debt–and household debt in particular–has risen so much in Australia that, at its peak, the change in debt was responsible for almost 20 percent of aggregate demand. More
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