U.S. Dollar Losing Its Safe-Haven Status?  With political upheaval surfacing in the Mid-East and North Africa, global capital increasingly has been moving into traditional safe-haven investments such as precious metals, or into safe-haven currencies such as the Swiss franc.  What is of particular significance here is that flight capital has been seeking shelter outside of the U.S. dollar, which for decades had been the favored safe-haven currency.  Against the U.S. dollar, the Swiss franc – another traditional safe-haven currency – hit a record high in the last day or so.  Other than for the British pound, the U.S. currency has been losing exchange-rate value against the other major currencies (Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Japanese yen and even the euro) during this period of mounting political instabilities.   Gold has neared its all-time high, while silver recently has set a multi-decade high.

Oil prices have spiked in response to the various crises, adding further upside pressure to U.S. consumer inflation from oil supply fears and ongoing dollar weakness.  As with the dollar-debasement efforts of the Fed, these inflation pressures reflect factors other than strong economic demand.

At the same time, the fragility of the faux U.S. economic recovery is becoming more obvious to the markets, with economic data increasingly surprising consensus forecasts on the downside, as seen in this week’s home sales and GDP revision reporting.  In the months ahead, an intensifying “renewed” decline in broad economic activity should gain increasing market recognition.

Irrespective of whether the political turmoil spreads or dies down, irrespective of Saudi efforts to help contain panicked oil price rises, irrespective of short-lived fluctuations in exchange rates and precious  metals prices, the U.S. now stands at a point where it is particularly vulnerable to an evolving global loss of confidence in the U.S. dollar.  Heavy selling of the U.S. currency and panicked dumping of dollar-denominated paper assets, which could trigger U.S. financial market upheaval and the early stages of a hyperinflation, is possible at any time with little or no warning.  It could be triggered by an unhappy economic or political surprise, or otherwise.  Where risks remain high of U.S. financial turmoil unfolding in the months ahead, the onset of a hyperinflation still has an outside timing estimate of 2014.

A full review on the economy, inflation and systemic-solvency issues follows in next week’s update to the Hyperinflation Inflation Report.  The broad outlook and potential hyperinflation timing remain consistent with last year’s missive, and regular readers of the SGS Commentaries should find few surprises in the revamped report.

New Withholding-Tax Series Should Provide Insights to Employment, Earnings and Fiscal Conditions.  Although still a work in progress, we are pleased to introduce a new analysis of a highly meaningful but not widely tracked statistic: federal receipts of payroll withholding taxes.  Several subscribers have requested that we cover the series as an economic indicator, where withholding-tax receipts should rise and fall with employment, earnings and tax law changes.  This series has two advantages over the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) payroll survey, where the tax data become available one day after they are deposited to the U.S. Treasury, and where the series covers all employers.  It is not a sample, and filing accuracy by employers is mandatory.

Unfortunately, though, working backwards from the data to get a clear picture of what is happening in the labor market is unusually complex, but much of that complexity can be overcome.  At present, we can get some useful quantitative signals and checks against other statistics; ultimately we hope to provide a more timely and accurate indication of changes in the employment picture than currently is available from the BLS. 

The complexity generally results from the tax deposits with U.S. Treasury being concentrated on days arising from interacting payroll calendar cycles and deposit schedules. This makes the significance of daily or weekly totals, and even their comparison with prior years, difficult.  Further, since withholding tax is a non-linear function of wages, and there is a distribution of wages and personal tax situations across the population, conclusions about overall job and wage levels or growth cannot be reached easily.

Our contribution here has been to create a process for standardizing tax receipts during a four-week period – comparable with the four-week period the year before – enabling year-to-year comparison with some meaning.  Further detail on this series and our approach will be posted on the SGS Web site in the next week, with subscribers being advised of that posting by e-mail.

The graph following reflects the raw standardized data, without any adjustment for seasonal variation.  Formal recessions are marked by the shaded areas.  Again, keep in mind that numbers are driven by employment, earnings and tax laws.  The regular peaks in activity tend to be tied to the payment of year-end bonuses.

 

 

Year-to-Year Change in Payroll-Tax Receipts – Volatility Ahead of Sustained Impact from Lowered Social Security Withholdings.  The next graph shows the year-to-year change in payroll-tax deposits at the U.S. Treasury, with the latest data showing a particularly sharp drop in the past week, extending a general trend of slowing or contracting annual growth in the last month.  Individual data can be highly volatile, and not too much should be read into any individual data point.  That said, an annual decline could be expected from this year’s temporary two-percentage point cut in Social Security withholding taxes, and such should be affecting tax deposits soon, if it has not already started to do so.  Also the effects of the relative timing and accounting strategies for year-end bonus payments, which have affected data of the last couple of months, also have a few weeks to play out.  After that, it should be possible to extract some meaningful information on the developing trends for 2011 U.S. fiscal conditions.

 

 

BEA’s “Second” Guesstimate on Fourth-Quarter 2010 GDP Was Increasingly Flimsy.  The downside revision to fourth-quarter GDP growth reflected slower growth in personal consumption and in spending by local governments than had been estimated in initial reporting.  The trade deficit – as reflected in the net export account – actually narrowed, despite the extraordinary divergence between the GDP estimates and the trade deficit reporting as of December 2010.  The December trade report suggested a much smaller quarterly improvement in the fourth-quarter trade deficit than was reflected in the GDP accounting (see Commentary No 350.)

Of the 2.79% annualized real growth now estimated for fourth-quarter GDP, the purported improvement in the trade deficit accounted for 3.35 percentage points of growth (the GDP contracted net of the trade gains), while much slower growth reported for inventories knocked 3.70 percentage points off what otherwise would have been reported.  Given the unreliability of these underlying series, current GDP is less meaningful than usual.  This number will go through one more regular revision at the end of March, and then it will be subject to annual benchmark revisions in July, when economic history of the last couple of years will be revised, likely showing a much weaker economic environment than currently is perceived by the financial markets.  

GDP — The Detail.  Published this morning, February 25th, by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the "second" estimate (first revision) of real (inflation-adjusted) fourth-quarter 2010 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annualized quarterly growth was 2.79% +/- 3% (95% confidence interval), down from an initial estimate of 3.17% but still marginally higher than the 2.56% growth estimated for the third-quarter.  For the year, average 2010 GDP versus 2009 was revised to 2.83% (initially 2.86%), versus a 2.63% decline in 2009 against 2008, while year-to-year change in fourth-quarter 2010 over fourth-quarter 2009 was up by a revised 2.70% (initially 2.79%), higher than the 1.95% year-to-year gain in fourth-quarter 2009, but lower than the 3.25% seen in third-quarter 2010.

The fourth-quarter GDP implicit price deflator was estimated at a revised annualized pace of 0.38% (initially 0.26%), versus 2.03% annualized quarterly inflation for third-quarter 2010.  In contrast, annualized seasonally-adjusted quarterly inflation for the CPI-U in the fourth-quarter spiked to a recently-revised seasonally-adjusted 2.62%, from 1.43% annualized inflation in the third-quarter (see Commentary No. 353).  The lower the inflation rate used in deflating the GDP, the stronger is the resulting inflation-adjusted number and vice versa.

The SGS Alternate-GDP estimate for fourth-quarter 2010 remains an approximate annual contraction of 2.1% versus the official estimate of a 2.8% gain. Such is more negative than the alternate 1.4% annual contraction (3.2% official gain) in the third-quarter (see the Alternate Data tab).  While annualized real quarterly growth is not estimated formally on an alternative basis, a flat-to-minus quarter-to-quarter change still appears to have been realistic for the fourth-quarter, in what generally has been a protracted period of bottom-bouncing.

Reflecting the latest revisions, the following graphs show, first, year-to-year percent change in the official inflation-adjusted quarterly GDP for the history of the series.  The record annual contraction for the series was 4.11%, seen in second-quarter 2009.  The second graph shows the average annual real growth by year for the history of the series.  The record annual contraction there, following the World War II production shutdown, was 2.63% in 2009.

 

 

 

GNP and GDI.  The initial estimates for fourth-quarter GNP (Gross National Product) and GDI (Gross Domestic Income) will not be published until the “third” estimate of fourth-quarter GDP on March 25th, since the actual data underlying these national income aggregate numbers remains of such little substance – sometimes educated and sometimes hopeful guesses – that the BEA recognizes these data would not be meaningful at present.  What the markets and the financial media do not realize is that today’s aggregated GDP report is as worthless as the aggregated GDI and GNP measures would have been had they been reported also.

January Durable Goods Bounced Higher Within Normal Series Volatility.  The Census Bureau reported yesterday (February 24th) that the regularly-volatile, seasonally-adjusted new orders for durable goods rose by 2.7% (up by 5.0% before prior-period revisions) month-to-month in January 2011, after a revised 0.4% (previously 2.5%) decline in December.  The monthly gain was more than accounted for by a sharp jump in irregular, long-term aircraft orders.  Unadjusted, year-to-year change in total January new orders was a gain of 8.2%, up from the revised 7.7% (previously 6.2%) annual increase reported for December.

The widely followed nondefense capital goods orders rose by 4.6% (up by 8.0% before prior-period revisions) in January, versus a revised monthly decline of 3.4% (previously down by 6.3%) in December.  For January, the unadjusted year-to-year growth in the series was 12.4%, up from a revised 9.3% (previously 6.2%) gain in December.

Home Sales Problems Mount.  Both existing and new home sales continued a pattern of bottom-bouncing in early 2011, with distressed sales increasing. 

Yesterday’s (February 24th) reporting of January new-home sales (counted based on contract signings, Census Bureau) showed a marginally, statistically-insignificant monthly decline of 12.6% (up 13.7% before prior period revisions) +/- 13.1% (95% confidence interval) from December.  December’s revised level was up by 15.7% (previously 17.5%) from November.  The year-to-year decline in new-home sales in January 2011 was a statistically-significant 18.6% +/- 18.0% (95% confidence interval), versus a revised 8.7% (previously 7.6%) decline in December.

Wednesday’s (February 23rd) release of January existing-home sales (counted based on actual closings, National Association of Realtors [NAR]) showed a 2.7% monthly increase (a decline of 0.1% net of prior-period revisions), versus December’s revised 12.5% (previously 12.3%) increase.  On a year-to-year basis, January sales were up by 5.3% from the year before.

Foreclosure activity remained a major distorting factor for home sales, with "distressed" activity accounting for an estimated 37% of existing sales in the NAR’s January reporting, up from 36% in December.

Separately, the Census Bureau acknowledges that a portion of new home sales also is from foreclosure activity but offers no estimates as to the scope of the issue.  Some in the construction trade have difficulty competing with the pricing of foreclosed properties.  Until the foreclosure problems get worked out in the system, monthly changes in these home sales numbers cannot be taken as meaningful positive indicators (when the numbers are positive) of underlying activity in homeowner real estate, as it relates to general economic activity.

 

 

 

 

 

The preceding graphs reflect different measures of home sales activity since February 2009.  The updated numbers, through January 2011, reflect the seasonally-adjusted level of monthly sales, rather than the annual rates usually published by the industry.