Bernanke's "Green Shoots"

From Bloomberg this morning.

The Labor Department’s April 3 report that the economy shed an additional 663,000 jobs last month, while the unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent, will be followed by months more of bad-news headlines, economists say. The recession, now in its 17th month, has already cost 5.1 million Americans their jobs, the worst drop in the postwar era; unemployment may hit 9.4 percent this year, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey, and may top out above 10 percent in 2010.

The risk is that the jobs picture turns even more bleak than forecast or the drumbeat of bad news still to come causes consumers, whose spending has firmed up in recent months, to hunker down again.

“If something happens to spook consumers and they crawl back into their tortoise shells, that would be terrible news,” says Alan Blinder, former Fed vice chairman and now an economics professor at Princeton University.

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than 70 percent of the economy, rose 0.2 percent in February after climbing 1 percent in January, breaking a six-month string of declines.

“Whether the little wisps of improvement in spending are sustained needs watching,” says Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Securities Inc. in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Interest Rates

Declining interest rates on mortgages and business loans led Bernanke, 55, to tell CBS Corp.’s “60 Minutes” on March 15 that he sees “green shoots” in some financial markets, and that the pace of economic decline “will begin to moderate.”

Fueled by optimism that the economy may finally be stabilizing, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index last month gained 8.5 percent, the most in seven years. Still, “I would be careful about chasing this rally,” Jason Trennert, chief investment strategist at Strategas Research Partners in New York, said in a March 27 interview.

With the Obama administration borrowing to finance record budget deficits, U.S. debt sales will almost triple this year to a record $2.5 trillion, according to estimates from Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The borrowings may send 10-year yields as high as 6 percent by the end of 2010 from 2.9 percent on April 4, Trennert says, adding that it’s “hard to get optimistic” about stock prices “if you’re in a situation where it’s reasonable to expect long- term interest rates to be higher.”

Stock-Price Plunge

Another plunge in stock prices is just one of the things economists say might derail any recovery. Others include the disorderly collapse of General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC or a major financial firm; or the failure of the Obama administration’s bank-rescue plan.

A one-month jump in the jobless rate of more than 0.6 percentage point would be a severe blow to confidence, says Alan Blinder, former Fed vice chairman and now an economics professor at Princeton University. So would monthly job losses that continue to top 600,000 into the second half of the year, says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Payrolls have been shrinking by more than that every month since December. Losses need to come down below 500,000 in the next few months and drop close to 100,000 by year-end to confirm that the worst of the recession is over, Zandi says.

“If we continue to lose 600,000-plus jobs a month, that will burn out those green shoots pretty quickly,” he says. “If you lose jobs like that, it continues to undermine consumer spending and confidence.”

I think that Big Ben has this right. We are seeing lots of "green shoots" or "mustard seeds" that will lead to a long term economic recovery. We have a crash in energy prices, as well as retailers that are offering the barn to try and stoke retail sales upward again. Also, the low, low interest rates lead to an upturned yield curve for banks that are borrowing to responsible lenders so bank balance sheets are becoming less leveraged. Also, we want to remember that unemployment is a lagging indicator so going forward we shouldn't look at the last quarters numbers as much as at the leading indicators. Also, with bargains abounding in the stock market the bear hopefully will go into hibernation within the next few quarters.

All of the indicators are pointing to recovery in the financials, but we are still struck down by a bout of fear.I think that this is capital's fear of the impending tax hike as well as fear of hyper-inflation. The President should retreat from his call for tax hikes until the economy has recovered, as we can not afford to lose any capital investment that would come our way.