One More Thing To Worry About

I was struck a few weeks ago when the third quarter personal income for Rhode Island was released and it indicated that our state's personal income fell. I quickly went to the Bureau of Economic Analysis' web site (www.bea.gov) and looked over the various components of Rhode Island's personal income change. In a very short time my general presumption was confirmed: a fairly substantial decline in transfer payments did Rhode Island in. This can be further summarized with just two words: unemployment insurance. This might seem like good or neutral news, but it is not. A little background on this should help to explain why.

The way that our state's economy is "built," which is true of all other states and the nation as a whole, is that when economic conditions deteriorate, be it from a slowing of economic growth or a full-blown recession, the resulting decline in income is "cushioned" by changes in transfer payments. If you are not familiar with what transfer payments are, these are transfers of income from taxpayers to persons based on their qualifying for programs such as unemployment insurance, food stamps, welfare, etc. You might know these by another name: entitlement spending. They get this name from the fact that government does not (contrary to its wildest dreams) set the total amount that is ultimately spent on these programs. Instead, government merely sets the criteria for entitlement along with various parameters that pertain to amounts paid and the maximum duration of benefits.

What, then, determines the amount that is ultimately spent on entitlements? This is based on how well or how badly the economy performs. So, as noted earlier, during times of economic weakness, as income declines, more people satisfy the criteria for entitlement to various programs, and they are allowed to receive the benefits they have qualified for. As this occurs, transfer payments or entitlement spending automatically rises, helping to offset weakness in income. It is important to be clear that the resulting increases in transfer payments are never large enough to totally offset income declines. The offset is only partial.

At this point, a few points need to be stated. First, there are two types of entitlement programs: those that are cyclical, and hence related to the overall level of economic activity, and secular-based entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. In this post I am only referring to the cyclically based entitlements. Second, cyclically based transfer payments and entitlements are countercyclical -- spending on these programs moves in the opposite direction of the overall economy by design. Finally, because spending on these rises during weak economic times, these add an element of stability to  the overall economy. Economists often refer to this as "automatic stabilization." 

Equipped with this background, a chart of quarterly wage and salary income for Rhode Island along with transfer payments (both expressed as percentages of personal income) should illustrate the basis for my concerns about the income report. In this graph, it should be apparent that when Rhode Island's employment weakened, then began falling after 2006, wages and salaries fell from about 22 percent of personal income to a low of about 16 percent. As everyone knows, because Rhode Island's employment peaked so early (December of 2006, a full year before the US), this produced the very high unemployment rates we have been burdened with for years now. The "bright" side of this, if you want to think of it this way, is that this high unemployment ushered in substantial increases in transfer payments (also for food stamps and welfare), moving transfer income from about 17 percent of personal income in late 2006 to about 21 percent in 2009 and beyond.

The result was some offset to the lost wage and salary income which made the recession here less deep and severe than it might otherwise have been. My concern, however, is what has begun to occur during the most recent quarters: employment has remained very week here, causing wage and salary income to remain at a reduced percentage of personal income at the same time that increasing numbers of Rhode Islanders are exhausting their unemployment insurance benefits (many after 99 weeks of benefits), which is causing entitlements to fall relative to income. In other words, these two are no longer offsetting. Weakness in each is reinforcing declines in the other. This bodes very badly for income growth in future quarters, especially our ability to sustain the strength in retail sales we observed in the last part of 2011.

Looking forward to the remainder of 2012, this becomes yet another question mark for Rhode Island's economic future. As employment here remains about 7 percent below our late-2006 employment peak and our state's unemployment rate stays in the "top five" nationally, things here continue to look very weak overall, in spite of occasional improvements in our cyclical performance. But is the existing labor market date that lies at the heart of all of this accurate?

Historically, in the year following upward date revisions, which we saw last year, the data are revised lower. I refuse to believe that when the next round of labor market rebenchmarking occurs in late February these atrocious numbers will remain or be made worse. IF that occurs, and I truly hope it doesn't, I will have a great deal more to say about what Rhode Island needs to be concerned with and the pace at which our leaders will need to start dealing with our structural problems.  Stay tuned!

The Role of Growth in the Debt Crisis

For the first time since 1917, the US no longer has the highest possible credit rating, AAA. As everyone knows by now, last Friday, shortly after the stock market closed, S&P reduced its rating of US debt to AA+, its second highest ranking, based on a combination of the political wrangling involved with the way the US conducted itself during the debt/deficit deal process, the deal itself (deferred cuts + smoke and mirrors), and the economic prospects for the US moving forward.

Critical to all of this is the likely trajectory of the future debt burden on the US economy, which clearly impacts our ability to afford this debt. But how is debt burden defined? As a basic economic tenet, this is defined in relative terms -- the debt relative to our country's ability to afford it. Our ability to afford it, or ability to pay, is predicted on GDP, the value of final goods and services produced in the US. So, the focus of whether we can afford to pay our debt in the future is defined based on the Debt to GDP Ratio:

Debt to GDP Ratio = National Debt/GDP

This is not unlike what your credit worthiness is evaluated based on if (say) you apply for an auto loan: what percentage of your income (which works like GDP here) will the payments (debt) account for? Generally, if this ratio exceeds 28%, you'll be instructed not to forget to close the door on your way out -- application over! The lower is the relevant ratio, or debt relative to the ability to pay it, the more credit worthy the person or country is deemed to be.

Permit me to digress to an algebraic result at this point: through time, this ratio falls when debt grows more slowly than GDP. In other words, economic growth (the change in GDP) must outpace increases in debt for debt burden to decrease through time. So far, so good. The problem is that things get much more complicated because changes in the rate of growth themselves alter national debt by changing the federal budget.

Consider what happens when the rate of economic growth falls, either during recessions or periods of slowing growth. The way our fiscal system is designed, two critical elements automatically impact the federal budget: progressive income taxation; and entitlement spending for programs such as unemployment insurance or welfare.

1. In a slowing economy or a recession, income tax revenue automatically falls, as there is now less income available to tax (the result of layoffs, reduced hours, etc.).
2. At the same time, more persons qualify for entitlement programs such as unemployment insurance, automatically raising the amount spent by those programs. (FYI: the reason these are called entitlement programs is that the government only sets the criteria for entitlement, not the actual amount spent in any year. That is determined by how well or badly the economy does.)
3. Entitlement spending is countercyclical, meaning that it rises when the level of economic activity falls (such as in recessions), and falls when economic activity improves (in recoveries).

The overall result is that the federal budget either has a smaller surplus (yeah, right!) or a larger deficit when economic activity deteriorates. More importantly, the larger deficit then adds to the national debt. The result is a greater debt to GDP ratio. As this shows, changes in the national debt are necessarily linked to changes in the rate of economic growth.

In light of this, what do governments often attempt to do? Pad the denominator -- overstate likely rates of future economic growth, making the debt appear to be less of a burden than it will actually prove to be. Actually, there is an added bonus to doing this: based on what I outlined above, if the rate of economic growth is overstated, tax revenue will also be overstated ("smoke"), while entitlement spending will be understated ("mirrors"), making the deficit, and thus the change in debt, appear to be smaller than it will eventually turn out to be!


The problem is, you can only get away with this for so long. Eventually, either voters or rating agencies will figure out what's been going on. That's when the party ends!

Of course, there are lots of other fiscal tricks that have been utilized by our government for quite some time now. I won't get into those now, but they often consist of deferring future cuts or revenue changes, assuming that these will definitely occur when assumed. This is essentially what the first round of debt reduction did.

Perhaps had the recent political process dealing with this not been such a fiasco, we might have continued to get away with these practices and gimmicks. While two of the rating agencies did not deem our debt and this process to be problematic, the S&P finally had enough, making the downgrade call. Interestingly, S&P also made mathematical errors in their determination our creditworthiness. Apparently their mind was already made up - they refused to be confused by the facts! They claimed that it was just merely a matter of different assumptions in future years. Obviously, the effects of padding exist in both directions -- symmetrical fudge factors!

Instead of arguing with S&P's decision, I prefer to view it as a very necessary wake-up call to our nation and its leaders. We have to change and to abandon the pervasive use of "smoke and mirrors." Remember, the S&P rating was not only a downgrade, it included a negative outlook as well. So, if the "committee of twelve" does what appears to be likely, more theatrics and gridlock, the US could be downgraded even further by S&P. And, I don't rule out possible downgrades by either or both of the other ratings agencies.

At the top of my holiday wish list is one very prominent wish: that members of the US House of Representatives stop acting like a bunch of spoiled three year olds, and that they finally place the good of our country ahead of their fragile egos. Unfortunately, this is not likely to be the case. As we have now begun the move toward "round two" of the debt ceiling process, the markets yesterday were rather unequivocal -- they tanked today just after hearing the list of persons who will make up the group of twelve that will potentially decide the next round of spending cuts. Unless a miracle occurs, this group will almost certainly end up deadlocked, resulting in mandatory cuts being put into place -- but they only go into effect after the election. Here we go again!