Auerback: The Real Reason Banks Aren’t Lending By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and fund manager who writes at New Deal 2.0

Image via Wikipedia

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/08/auerback-the-real-reason-banks-arent-lending.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29


Our Treasury Secretary has conceded

that it is still a “tough economy” for most Americans, and warned it’s possible the unemployment rate will go up for a couple of months before it comes down. Given the constellation of recent economic data that has come out, Tim Geithner is probably correct.

The US economy is showing signs of slowing, as the fiscal stimulus is dissipating and spending contractions at the state and local government level increasingly undermine the injections from the federal sphere. Worse, it appears that much of the growth has resulted largely from a replenishment of inventories, a process which largely seems to have run its course. Excluding this inventory re-stocking, underlying growth was a very tepid 1.5% annualised. Fiscal drag from state spending contraction could well reduce overall consumption even further in the quarters ahead, an ominous trend for future growth and employment prospects. While we may not experience a “double dip” in purely technical terms, it will certainly feel like a return to recession for most Americans if Geithner’s assessment is anywhere close to being accurate.

At this stage, there is a widespread belief that government fiscal stimulus has run up against its “limits” on the grounds of “fiscal sustainability” and the need to retain “the confidence of the markets”. Consequently, goes this line of reasoning, as private credit conditions improve the private sector must pick up the baton of growth where the public sector leaves off. If this proves insufficient, there is room for an expansion of monetary policy via “quantitative easing“.

Recent speeches  by the Fed suggest that they are indeed laying the groundwork for such a return to quantitative easing, or “QE2″ as the markets are now calling it. It’s not the name of a ship-liner: quantitative easing essentially means that the central bank buys up high yielding assets and exchanges them for lower yielding assets. The premise is that the central bank floods the banking system with excess reserves, which will then theoretically encourage the banks to lend more aggressively in order to chase a higher rate of return. Not only is the theory plain wrong, but the Fed’s fixation on credit growth is curiously perverse, given the high prevailing levels of private debt. More borrowing is the last thing the highly stressed and leveraged American household requires today.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Here's The Real Reason Banks Aren't Lending: Americans Just Aren't Creditworthy (businessinsider.com)
• US Treasury yields fall to record low on Fed's 'QE lite' plan (telegraph.co.uk)
• An American Future: The Shrinking Economy (economicnoise.com)
• Private sector job growth remains tepid (reuters.com)
• Bernanke: 'Considerable Way To Go To Achieve Full Recovery' (forexlive.com)