George Osborne Shows He’s Learnt Nothing from Greece or Ireland

By Michael Burke

The Autumn Statement was widely presented as facing up to harsh realities of slower growth, but with George Osborne offering a series of cunning schemes in order to resolve the crisis .

The stagnation of the British economy is a function of government policy and plans to increase investment by increasing the credit available to smaller firms will founder because they will not invest when they don’t expect to make profits .

SEB has long argued that government needs to increase investment in a series of areas. Surely, the government’s plans to increase investment in infrastructure should be welcome? But the government’s planned increase amounts to less than £3.8bn spread over four years, or less than 0.1% of GDP in each year. In addition, most of the wish list for infrastructure and capital projects is dependent on investment in the private sector. So, George Osborne and Boris Johnson stood outside Battersea power station in London and talks of new tube lines, enterprise zones and 25,000 jobs. Just two days later the private developer central to the project collapsed into receivership.

Worse, the government’s planned increase in capital spending is paid for by taking money from the pockets of the poorest and most vulnerable in society. These will bite much harder in later years, long after the pathetically small planned increased in investment has come to an end. This is shown in the table below, from the Autumn Statement.

Table 1

 

So, there are total cuts in current spending in 2012/13 of £910mn and total cuts over the next 3 years of £3.8bn, shown as a positive sign in the Treasury bookkeeping method. This is in order to pay for tax cuts (fuel duty) and a projected increase in capital spending. But in the two following years the projected cuts to current spending increase dramatically for a total of over £27bn cuts in all. Although these are mostly unspecified, the itemised cuts include child tax credits, working tax credits, real public sector pay cuts and the breaking of the promise to uphold overseas development aid at 0.7%.

This is a very damaging but much milder version of the same logic that has led Greece and Ireland to disaster - every failure to meet budgetary targets because of the impact of ‘austerity’ is met by further ‘austerity’ measures. But the deficit is and borrowing totals are likely to go higher still as the economy stagnates- or worse. It may only be a matter of time before this same logic produces comparably savage cuts in spending- with the same economic consequences.

Politically, by pre-announcing needed cuts for the next Parliament Osborne hopes to bind all parties to further ‘austerity’ measures. For the LibDems, Danny Alexander has already proved obliging, signing up to Tory cuts of £23bn in the next Parliament. The key question is whether Labour will go down the same path in accepting the need for cuts even when they have demonstrably failed to deliver economic growth or even deficit-reduction. It is the path that leads to Athens and must be resisted.

Desperate Osborne's Subsidies to Businesses Won't Work

By Michael Burke

George Osborne has told the BBC that there will be £40bn in ‘credit easing’ so that small firms can obtain both cheaper and more readily available loans. Osborne has called the scheme a ‘game-changer’. If the funds had the stated impact, of increasing investment by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), then it would certainly provide a significant lift to the economy. £40bn is equivalent to 2.8% of GDP.

The strength of this overblown rhetoric may be judged by the fact that there are widespread reports that the Office for Budget Responsibility is set to slash its growth forecasts for 2012 to just 1% from 2.5% previously.

How is it that significant funds for new investment by business will actually lead to no improvement in the outlook for growth, even on the usually over-optimistic forecasts from the OBR?

There are to be at least two, possibly three funds. The first will be guarantees to increase the availability of credit. The second will be a fund to lower the cost of that credit to SMEs. Since SEB continually argues for increased investment, surely this is a good thing?

Private Sector Failure

Even official forecasts do not assume that growth will significantly improve as a result of this policy. This highlights the fallacy that underlies all current attempts to persuade, cajole, demand or bribe private firms to increase their investment. The fallacy is that those firms are struggling under the burden of insufficient funds to invest. Of course certain individual firms may have such difficulties. But in aggregate that is not the case.

In a previous bulletin SEB showed that in 2010 the total Gross Operating Surplus of the business sector in Britain was £475bn. These are akin to profits. Yet the entire level of investment (Gross Fixed Capital Formation) was just £214bn in 2010. As this includes the investment by both private individuals and government, it is clear that businesses have vast resources already from which they could increase investment.

The chart below shows the decline in total Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF) and corporate sector GFCF. Both these measures of investment began falling one quarter before the recession itself began. The fall in both at their low-point in the 4^th quarter of 2010, of over 20%, is approximately three times as great as the fall in GDP of at 7.1%. Both chronologically and arithmetically the decline in investment, led by declining business investment, led the recession.

Figure 1

Both measures of investment have experienced a small recovery. Business investment began to rise in the 1^st quarter of 2010. This was two quarters after both total investment and GDP began to rise in the 3^rd quarter of 2009.

Private sector investment led the recession. But it cannot lead the recovery. This is demonstrated in the chart below, which shows corporate GFCF and GDP.

Figure 2

The recovery in business investment occurred two quarters after the economy as a whole began to recover. This is because the increase in investment did not depend on the availability of resources, as profits have exceeded investment by some distance throughout the entire crisis.

Corporate investment rises and falls in line with expected returns. The purpose of capital is the preservation or expansion of capital. If the economy is not growing a main motive will be to preserve capital. If the economy is expanding, it will be increase capital through profitable returns on investment.

This is what happened in 2009-10. GDP began to expand in mid-2009 and six months later corporate GFCF began to increase. Precisely the same time lag operated in the reverse situation. Corporate GFCF fell once more in the 1^st quarter of 2011. This was six months after the modest recovery peaked n the 3^rd quarter of 2009.

Public Sector Leadership

The new factor which caused the recovery was the increase in public sector investment (both by general government and the remaining public sector corporations). At its highpoint in the 4^th quarter of 2009, public sector investment was over 20% higher than its pre-recession level.

This led directly to the increase in GDP which in turn eventually prompted the private sector to increase its own investment. The Tory-led Coalition immediately cut public investment on taking office, and six months afterterwards private investment began to contract once more.

Instead of subsidising the private sector to invest, the proven means of achieving that end is for government to increase its own investment. It could divert the support for borrowing costs to agents who are willing to invest, such as local authorities who want to invest in housing, infrastructure, transport and education.

Even on official forecasts the borrowing subsidy to SMEs will not work. But the recent history of the British economy shows that investment by the public sector will have the effect of restoring growth which in turns leads o a revival of corporate investment. Subsidies and bribes to businesses to invest will not work while there is no growth. Increasing, not cutting, the investment of the public sector will lead to recovery.

Latest UK GDP data even worse than it looks

By Michael Burke

The latest release for British GDP in the 3^rd quarter was unrevised – but the composition of that growth was awful. GDP rose by 0.5% in the quarter and is just 0.5% higher than a year ago. But analysis of the components of growth suggests the outlook is deteriorating.

Household consumption did not grow at all in the quarter and contracted by 1.5% over the course of the year. Investment (gross fixed capital formation) fell by 0.2% in the quarter and by 1.8% from a year ago. In terms of domestic expenditure only government spending rose in the quarter, up 0.9% on the quarter and 2.9% over the year. This is testimony to the multiplication of ‘austerity’ measures: If unemployment and poverty are increasing at a faster rate even than you cut welfare benefits your total welfare bill will rise.

Taken together UK domestic expenditure rose by £3bn in real terms in the quarter. But inventories rose by £2.9bn at the same time and therefore account for almost the entirety of domestic growth in the quarter. Since GDP rose by just £1.8bn in the 3^rd quarter, the rise in inventories indeed exceeds the growth in GDP as well as accounting for almost the entirety of growth in domestic spending.

Inventory Build-Up

Inventories are a cyclical and erratic component of growth. But a persistent rise in inventories over a number of quarters only occurs if businesses are receiving new orders and are restocking as they become increasingly confident about a sustained upturn. This is sometimes called a voluntary rise in inventories. But this is not at all the situation presently. Domestic demand is stagnant and exports have also fallen in the last two quarters. It seems unlikely that order-books are filling up and businesses becoming more confident about future prospects. In fact the respected Market Purchasing Managers’ Index shows that new orders have been slowing dramatically, as shown in the chart below.

Figure 1 – PMI New Orders, National & London

Therefore the current build-up in stocks is likely to be an involuntary. Inventories are most likely rising because sales have not met expectations. If so, businesses will tend to meet new orders by depleting those existing inventories rather than increasing output. At the very least this rise in inventories is unlikely to be repeated over several quarters. The addition to growth in the 3^rd quarter arising from rising inventories is unlikely to be repeated over several quarters.

As we have seen domestic demand would have been close to zero and GDP would have contracted without rising inventories. To avoid that fate in subsequent quarters some other component(s) of growth will have to begin to grow once more. Otherwise the British economy will begin to contract once more.

Profits and Austerity In the Industrialised Economies

By Michael Burke

A previous SEB article examined the profit rate in the Irish economy which is rising even though the economy continues to contract. Yet at the same time Ireland’s level of investment is falling. Corporate incomes – profits - are rising even though total economic activity is falling. Arithmetically, this can only occur by reducing the income of labour - wages are falling both in absolute terms and as a proportion of total economic activity. It happens that the Irish Department of Finance set this out with some clarity. This is indeed is the thrust of the entire ‘austerity’ policy – a transfer of incomes from labour to capital across the industrialised economies of Europe, as well as in the US and Japan.

Who Is Paying for the Crisis?

The table below shows the Gross Value Added (GVA) of selected economies, and how this is divided between the compensation of employees and the gross operating surplus of the corporate sector. GVA is a measure of all the value created in an economy. It is the same as GDP except that it excludes the impact of taxes and subsidies. With some important qualifications the Compensation of Employees (CoE) is akin to labour’s share of that value added, while the Gross Operating Surplus (GOS) is akin to the level of profits in each economy. This provides an approximate measure of economic activity and its distribution as income: Value-Wages-Profits. In the table blow the profit rate is calculated as the share of GOS in Gross Value Added.

Table 1. GVA, Compensation of Employees, Gross Operating Surplus and the Profit Rate, €bn in 2010 (unless otherwise stated)

The general tendency has been that the crisis-hit countries have the highest profit rates. This was an important factor in the build-up to the crisis. In nearly all countries the crisis was characterised by reduced investment by the corporate sector, which remains the driving force behind the economic crisis. In these higher profit countries the fall in investment had a greater impact on aggregate demand as the corporate sector takes a bigger share of GVA. In turn, the fall in investment had a bigger negative impact on household incomes, especially through rising unemployment.

Profits and deficits

The profit rates should also be seen in relation to the public sector deficits that have caused so much turmoil. In all cases the public sector deficits are a fraction of the level of profits. In Greece the 2010 deficit was €25bn, in Italy it was €70bn, in Ireland it was €19bn (excluding an extraordinary bank bailout), and so on. The deficits could easily be covered in their entirety simply by extracting a fraction of the profit level from the corporate sector in each country. The same is true of Britain, where the profit level in 2010 was £475bn compared to a deficit of £137bn. (The British profit level is depressed and consequently the profit rate is lower because of the slump in the financial sector – a factor which also applies to a lesser degree in the US and even to France).

Who can pay for the crisis?

There are effectively three destinations for profits. These are investment, which raises future prosperity, or dividends for shareholders which are not invested or huge executive compensation and bonuses, both of which do not. The table below shows the level of profits, the level of public sector borrowing and the level of gross fixed capital formation (investment). In the last column the difference is shown between the level of profits and the level of public borrowing and investment combined.

Table 2. Gross Operating Surplus, Public Sector Borrowing and Investment, €bn in 2010 (unless otherwise stated)

Table 2 shows that in all cases the current level of both the public sector borrowing and the current level of investment can be funded by the level of profits in each country and in the Euro Area. In most cases there is scope to fund both the deficit and significantly increase the level of investment. But the opposite has been happening.

The struggle over distribution of national income

In most recessions capital’s share of income falls. This is not because wages rise, but because profits fall at a faster rate than the fall in output. What then usually occurs is a struggle by capital to regain its lost share of income. It does this by cutting wages and benefits, by increasing unemployment and by reducing its tax burden - financed by reducing social welfare benefits. This is the content of ‘austerity’ measures.

Figure 1 below shows how this has operated in the Euro Area as a whole. Between 2008 and 2009 GVA in the Euro Area fell by €254. Confirming the idea that profits fall at a faster rate than output, Euro Area profits (GOS) fell by €227bn. Profits fell by over 6%, twice as fast as the fall in output. Wages (CoE) fell by €17bn.

Figure 1

However, this natural tendency for profits to fall at a greater pace than the fall in output is interrupted and diverted by a series of interventions, including rising unemployment, wages and benefit cuts as itemised above. In the period 2009 to 2010 Euro Area GVA rose by €188bn. Of this increase in output €139bn went to profits and just €53bn accrued to wages.

Because of inflation the real level of both wages and profits has fallen sharply – all these data are in nominal terms and do not take account of inflation. The ‘austerity’ offensive to increase the profit share has partly been successful, but the wage share of national income has not undergone any strategic reversal.

This is contrasted with Greece. Greek nominal GVA did not fall in 2009 at all as the Greek recession was shallower than most. GVA fell in 2010 by €6bn. This is shown in chart 2. The massive offensive against Greek workers and the poor means that the natural tendency for profits to fall faster than output has not operated. The level of wages fell by €4.4bn and profits fell by just €1.8bn. The wage share of national income has suffered a reversal.

Figure 2

Readers will be interested to know where Britain stands in relation to these examples, one of them the extreme case of Greece (and previously, Ireland). In 2009 British GVA fell by £38bn, shown in Chart 3 below. This was exceeded by the fall in profits, down £43bn and wages rose by £5bn. The entirety of policy since has been to reverse those trends. GVA rose in 2010 by €40bn. (It should again be stressed that these are nominal data, in real terms output is still over 4% below its peak and real wages have fallen).

Figure 3

As a result of initial ‘austerity’ measures, £18bn of the increase in output has been claimed for profits. But it is widely understood that the real offensive in Britain only began in the new Financial Year, which began in April this year. What is being attempted is a decisive reversal of the wages’ share of national income.

Conclusion

Countries like Greece are experiencing a qualitatively sharper crisis than the European average. There is a high correlation between the likelihood of economies falling into this type of extreme crisis and their exceptionally high level of pre-crisis profits. Because the income of the corporate sector is a much greater factor in the economy, their investment strike hass a proportionately greater impact on total output and/or government finances.

Profits remain exceptionally high, so much so that they could finance the deficit while simultaneously increasing the level of investment.

Under normal working of a market economy the tendency is for profits to fall faster than output. The entire ‘austerity’ policy is to prevent this tendency from operating, and to reverse it by reducing wages even faster than the decline in output. In the Euro Area, to date this has only been achieved in Ireland and Greece.

In Britain, it’s too early to say whether a similar ‘austerity’ drive will achieve the same disastrous results. But it is clearly the aim of government policy to drive up profits even while the economy is stagnating. This can only be achieved by driving down wages.

The relation of profits and 'austerity'

By Michael Burke

In what may be an important development the Financial Times reports that, in return for accepting much larger ‘haircuts’ (imposed losses on the value of the bonds they own) bondholders are demanding that there must be a growth strategy for Greece.

In a piece headlined ‘Bondholders Demand Greek Growth Plan’ the paper quotes the Managing Director and chief negotiator for the Institute of International Finance, which represents the largest bondholders mainly the banks. The call for a growth plan is not given much substance in the article.

But there is a logic to the demand. Bondholders are most concerned about cash flow from interest payments and the final repayment of debt principal. In all the Euro Area economies where severe ‘austerity’ measures have been applied bond yields have risen - Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and now Italy. This implies that the bondholders’ risk of not receiving those cash flows and principal has risen, and that a higher interest rate is demanded to compensate. ‘Austerity’, a generalised attack on the living standards of the overwhelming majority, has failed to provide reassurance to bondholders that they will get all the bond repayments. Instead, the reduction in incomes and economic crisis that has followed has increased the risks that the governments will default. If it proves to be the case now that the bondholders are demanding not more austerity, but growth, this would reflect the accurate judgment on their part that the risk of default has increased because of massive cuts in government spending. It is a demand that the European governments provide funds to Greece to help the economy recover, not impose more cuts.

Can ‘Austerity’ Work?

Of course the bondholders, mainly the banks but also increasingly other parasites such as hedge funds and ‘vulture funds’, had no qualms about massive assaults on pay, jobs, pensions, services and welfare benefits while they thought it improved their own prospects of being repaid by EU governments. But even at an earlier stage it was clear to some that cuts in government spending would not work. This is shown in the actions of the credit ratings’ agencies – who effectively represent the interests of the bondholders – and have repeatedly campaigned for large cuts in government spending, only then to downgrade countries such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain because of the negative economic impact of those same cuts.

By now it is increasingly clear in the case of Greece that any further cuts will be equally counter-productive in restoring the growth required to service debt. But the IMF, ECB and EU Commission are holding up another example of how their impositions can be made to work - Ireland. The ‘Troika’ argue that successive Irish governments (the current coalition of the rightist Fine Gael and Irish Labour Party having replaced the populist right of Fianna Fail) have stuck to the measures agreed, that growth has resumed and that therefore the deficit is falling.

In fact, the previous government imposed cuts in 2008 and before any international agency demanded them. The current government is set to announce its own first Budget, which will also impose greater cuts than demanded by the Troika. It is also widely understood, if not by the Troika, that Irish GDP is artificially inflated by the activities of (mainly) US multinationals booking activity and profits in Ireland to avail of its ultra-low corporate taxes. This has seen GDP rise in the latest two quarters. But domestic demand fell again by 1.1% in the 2^nd quarter of this year, a 3 ½ year-long slump collapse and is now 24.8% below its level at the end of 2008. According to the IMF the Dublin government’s deficit will be 10.3% of GDP this year, having been 7.3% before the cuts began to bite in 2008.

Even so, the Troika are increasingly determined that the deficit will decline and prove their case. They point to the fact that, excluding enormous bank bailouts equivalent to over 20% of GDP last year, borrowing fell from €23.5bn in 2009 to €19.3bn in 2010, an improvement of €4.2bn. Yet this is simply because the value of bonds redeemed in 2010 was €4bn lower. Otherwise there is no underlying improvement in the level of borrowing at all.

But there is an important difference with Greece. Following big tax increase Athens’ taxation revenues have fallen by 4.2%in the first 9 months of this year whereas Dublin’s tax revenues are 8.4% higher reflecting the imposition of new income taxes. The key difference is that Ireland was a much more prosperous country than Greece prior to the crisis. Per capita incomes were 50% higher, even adjusted for Purchasing Power Parities. Therefore, while the cuts have certainly had a negative impact on Irish growth, and the domestic economy continues to contract, the level of impoverishment of the entire economy is not in the same category as Greece, where even bondholders may now accept that further cuts are counter-productive. Instead, the impact of the cuts in Ireland might be said to be Greece in slow-motion.

Who Benefits?

The new caution in imposing further cuts in Greece is the worry of the loan-shark that the borrower may go bankrupt. But while there is still blood that can be squeezed in countries like Ireland cuts remain the sole policy agenda. The effect of this policy is clear from the recent publication of the sectoral accounts for the Irish economy.

This is shown in the chart below, which shows that as Gross Value Added continues to decline, profits have started to recover and therefore the profits’ share of national income has increased.

Figure 1

According to the Central Statistical Office (CSO), ‘The operating surplus or profits of non-financial corporations (NFCs) increased from €35.2bn in 2009 to €37.8bn in 2010. The other main component of value added is compensation of employees or wages and salaries which declined from €37.3bn in2009 to €34.9bn in 2010. Therefore the improved profit share relates more to a decline in payroll costs for these corporations rather than to an increase in overall value added.’
Yet this increase in the incomes of the corporate sector, wholly achieved by reducing wages, has not led to an increase in investment. It has led to the opposite, as the chart below shows.

Figure 2

In the words of the CSO, ‘Expressing gross fixed capital formation as a percentage of gross value added gives the investment rate. Gross value added is largely unchanged between 2009 and 2010 while investment fell from €7.5bn to €5.8bn in the same period resulting in a fall in the investment rate between 2009 and 2010.’

But there is also another way of expressing the investment rate - investment as a proportion of corporate incomes, or profits. On this measure, the investment rate has fallen by €1.9bn even as profits have increased by €2.9bn, by reducing wages by €4.9bn. The total investment rate has fallen on this measure from 21.3% to 15.3%.

From the point of the view of the economy as a whole, this transfer of incomes has been disastrous. The corporate sector has €32bn in unspent (uninvested) income from profits. But the household sector – which spends more than 90% of its income – has had its income reduced.

The thrust of policy is not to produce an economic recovery. It is to produce a recovery in profitability. In this, it has been a qualified success. The absolute level of profits has recovered from its low and the profit share of output has also increased to more than 50%, even if profits have not recovered their previous peak. The intention is clearly to achieve that goal at the expense of wages.

In Ireland it has become commonplace to suggest that, while all sorts of investment projects and welfare provision are desirable, ‘there is no money left’. On the contrary, the €32bn level of uninvested profits in 2010 alone is almost exactly equal to the entire reduction in GDP in the recession which began in 2008, €34bn.

This is the thrust of the entire ‘austerity’ policy across Europe, the transfer of incomes from labour to capital in order to increase profitability. In a subsequent blog SEB will examine the effective of this policy in the leading European economies, including Britain.