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Mix-Ansicht- Global: A Post-Bubble Chronology - Stephen Roach - Cosa, 14.09.2002, 13:20
- Danke! war wohl nur ein böser Scherz bei CNBC - nasdaq, 14.09.2002, 15:31
Global: A Post-Bubble Chronology - Stephen Roach
-->Hallo,
Stephen Roach scheint doch nicht von MorganStanley gefeuert worden zu sein; zumindest schreibt er weiter im Global Economic Forum, daraus ein Artikel.
Er beschreibt die post-bubble Ära, die ähnlich dem Schälen einer Zwiebel, eine Schicht bzw. bubble nach der anderen verliert. Los gings mit der Nasdaq, gefolgt von der IT und Telekommunikation. Demnächst sei dann die Immobilien-Bubble dran; zuletzt werde die Bubble der amerikanischen Verbraucher platzen.
Um in der Küche zu bleiben, das Schälen der Zwiebel geht langsam; demzufolge"post-bubble shakeouts don't end quickly".
Einen Vergleich hat er nicht gezogen, der liegt m.E. aber nahe, Zwiebelschälen geht häufig mit reichlich Tränen einher.....
Auswege für die globale Wirtschaft, als deren Motor er die USA sieht, seien möglicherweise ein Wegspülen der Exesse oder das Auftauchen eines neuen Motors der Weltwirtschaft. Aber wer könnte das sein?
<font size="5">Global: A Post-Bubble Chronology </font>
Stephen Roach (from Paris)
Back on the road after the summer break, I find that investors are more interested than ever in what ails the global economy. Most of them have finally lost their patience -- promises of the proverbial recovery around the corner have rung hollow for all too long. It's more one step forward and one step back -- the telltale footprints of a U-shaped world. The most frequently asked question: When, and under what conditions, will this tortuous road come to an end? The key, I answer, lies in the chronology of this post-bubble era. It goes something like this.
There are two basic building blocks to this chronology -- the first being that the world economy remains very much on a US-centric growth path. Since 1995, our estimates suggest that America has accounted for approximately 40% of the cumulative increase in world GDP -- roughly double the US share of global output (as measured by the IMF's purchasing power parity metrics). Sadly, there is no other growth engine in the world capable of driving the global economy. That means when America booms, so does the rest of the world. But it also means when the US economy swoons, the rest of the world can't be too far behind. That's certainly evident here in Europe, where any semblance of economic recovery now seems to be disappearing into thin air. Euroland's 2Q02 GDP report said it all -- a 0.1 percentage point contribution from domestic demand (not annualized). Little wonder why this summer?s double dip scare in America has had such a devastating impact on Europe, Japan, and other parts of Asia. Lacking in autonomous domestic demand, a US-led slowdown in global trade has quickly brought the world economy to its knees.
Like the ones before it, this shortfall will undoubtedly pass. But most likely, it won't pass for long. That's because the modern-day US economy -- the world's growth engine -- is now sputtering as never before. Enter the second building block to this chronology -- America's post-bubble business cycle. The basic message is that post-bubble shakeouts don't end quickly. To me it's like peeling away the layers of an onion. Nasdaq was the first layer to go, followed by IT and then telecom. But there are still more layers to come off this onion. They include the dollar bubble, the property bubble, and the biggest bubble of them all -- the American consumer. In the end, there was far more to the excesses of the 1990s than just an asset bubble. As I see it, the financial-market mania went on for long enough and high enough to have infected the real side of the US economy, as well as its balance-sheet underpinnings. Until those excesses are purged, I believe that there's a good deal more to come in the chronology of America's post-bubble adjustments.
There's one key aspect of the above that does represent a change in my thinking -- that America is now in the midst of a property bubble. I haven't come to that conclusion lightly. Two piece of evidence have pushed me over the edge: First, the sleuths at The Economist report that inflation-adjusted US house prices have"risen more in real terms since 1997 than in any previous five year period since 1945." Second, there's an excellent study by Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) that comes up with a perfectly reasonable way of assessing whether this surge in house prices qualifies as a bubble, or not. The CEPR test hinges on the relationship between housing rents -- the intrinsic returns on the asset -- and market-clearing home prices. Baker finds that inflation-adjusted house prices have risen by about 30% since 1995 -- literally three times the cumulative 10% rise in the real rental index over that same period. In fact, this gap between house-price and rental inflation has never been wider in the post-1975 history of these data. If that's not a bubble, I don't know what is.
The consumer bubble will undoubtedly be the last to go. But here as well, the fundamentals scream for adjustment. Saving-short and overly-indebted, the aging America population is coming to that point in the life-cycle when it must begin to come to grips with the looming reality of retirement. Yet it must now do so in an era of defined contribution pension plans whose performance has been battered by this wrenching bear market in equities. We all know that Americans are addicted to shopping. We also know that the fundamentals are screaming for an increased preference for income-based saving and a concomitant decline in spending propensities. So what might cause this last bubble to pop? It's hard to say -- predicting bubble-puncturing shocks is not my thing. That's not to say several possibilities don't come to mind -- namely, a spike in oil prices, a surge of white-collar layoffs, or a deflation of the property bubble. Any one of those developments, in my opinion, could send a wake-up call to the overly-extended American consumer. Logical as all this may sound, I am mindful that bubble-popping can just as easily be triggered by a series of little things rather than by a big event. Whatever the trigger, I have little doubt of the end game for the consumer bubble.
Yet just as it was when Nasdaq was lurching toward 5000 in early 2000, the overwhelming majority of observers remains in denial over the possibility of another bubble. This bubble-denial syndrome is perfectly understandable. After all, asset-driven domestic demand has long been a part of the Great American Boom. That's what the equity wealth effect was all about in the late 1990s and that's what the property wealth effect has been about in more recent years. Yet this extraction of"extra" purchasing power from ever-rising asset values is hardly a costless endeavor. It leads to a reduction in income-based saving rates and ever-higher debt loads -- the telltale signs that any asset bubble has infected the real economy. Sadly, few want to admit that this strategy is flawed if it draws the crux of the recent boom into question. I guess there's just too much at stake. As we should have learned a scant two and a half years ago, asset bubbles have an uncanny way of staying inflated for a lot longer than we think. But that doesn't mean there isn't a bubble. I was early in doubting the New Economy hype that was used to justify the Nasdaq bubble. Maybe I'm early in sounding the alarm over the property bubble as well. But in this critical instance, I think it pays to be early rather than late.
And so the world economy is likely to remain in the doldrums for some time to come. Not only is this the unfortunate legacy of America's asset bubble but it also reflects the persistence of a US-centric global growth dynamic. I see only two ways out from this vicious circle -- a purging of America post-bubble excesses or the emergence of a new engine of global growth. Until I am convinced that either one of these two saviors is on the scene, I see little reason to alter this dour prognosis.
schöne Grüsse
Cosa
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