The question is when will we ever move from deflation to inflation. Everyone looks at the Fed’s bloated balance sheet but the problem is that the reserves the central bank has created are sitting as cash on banking sector balance sheets and not being re-circulated into net new credit creation which suggests that velocity is still contracting. Not only is velocity contracting, but so are the broad monetary aggregates.

From a labour market standpoint, there cannot be inflation without accelerating wages, and the economy is now operating at a level that is equivalent to 10 million jobs short of full-employment. So basically, what this means is that we are anywhere from five to 10 years away from seeing any sustained increase in inflation. Indeed, the article on page A2 of today’s WSJ cites a Rutgers study suggesting that we will not see 5% on the unemployment rate again until the end of 2017; Global Insights has a 5.75% jobless rate occurring no sooner than 2019 (see It Will Be Years Before Lost Jobs Return – and Many Never Will).

In turn, this implies that the chances that we get to $83 on S&P operating EPS, which the equity market is in effect now discounting a doubling from current levels, could take at least that long to occur (five to 10 years). Again, this means that income-focused investment strategies are going to remain critical in terms of generating adequate real risk-adjusted returns for the foreseeable future.

To repeat, the employment/population ratio (the “employment rate”) has fallen to a quarter-century low of 58.8%; it peaked at 63.4% in 2007. To get back to a cycle high, we need to create more than 10 million jobs. Before that happens, deflationary pressures are going to trump whatever inflationary risks arise from the Fed, Congress and the White House.

The last time the ratio was this low was back in December 1983. Back then, household debt per capita was $9,900; today it is six times larger at $58,000. At the margin, one has to wonder what is going to be paid for first. The debt-service payments coming out of the paycheck are looking increasingly vulnerable. Default rates are extremely likely to worsen for the foreseeable future; groceries will not be sacrificed; however, credit will.

THE U.S. CONSUMER IS IN HUNKER-DOWN MODE

While thrift is still considered a ‘bad thing’ by most economists who crave a consumer-led revival, we would be happy to open that for debate. It would be much more heartening to see a revival fuelled by capital investment but when over one-third of manufacturing capacity is sitting idle, that may be a stretch; and considering that exports comprise little more than 10% of GDP, the foreign sector is hardly going to be adding a whole lot of torque to the GDP data, at least over the intermediate term. Looks like we are left with government.

This secular frugality theme was on our minds when we saw Flat Holiday Sales? Retailers Say They’ll Take It on page B1 of the Saturday NYT. Is this what a 65% surge in the S&P retailing index from the lows has priced in? A flat sales growth at the most important time of the year. And this would be flat over a 2.0% YoY decline in 2008, which was the weakest holiday showing in 40 years. A holiday study just published by Nielsen found that 85% of Americans are going to be spending the same or cutting back this year compared to what was the worst holiday season since the late 1960s. This is incredible and shows how the near-60% surge in the equity market over the past five months has been totally divorced from economic reality.

The NYT article hit home because it concluded that “people are also continuing to nest in their homes.” We were on top of this about two years ago. And here we are, and the article says that the best-selling item this holiday shopping season is expected to be – get this – “cookware and other kitchen sundries.” Can there be any worse news for the restaurant sector? Husbands are going to be buying their wives a new roasting pan for Christmas and wives are going to be giving their hubbies a fryer.

Luxury goods are expected to fare poorly (jewellery, sporting goods, vacations), and it looks like we may see some very deep discounting in the apparel space (NPD Group is calling for a 4-5% YoY decline this year – see Sales Hanging on By a Thread on page A8 of the Investor’s Business Daily). Ditto for toys, the specials are starting early – Wal-Mart is bringing back its $10 toy section back to all its stores and we’re not even close to Halloween yet. Moody’s reported last week that the holiday shopping period “may be more promotional than anticipated, as consumers have learned to delay shopping in anticipation of higher markdowns”. Now that is definitely a deflationary mindset.

Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said he’s been buying longer maturity Treasuries in recent weeks as protection against deflation.

“There has been significant flattening on the long end of the curve,” Gross said in an interview from Newport Beach, California, with Bloomberg Radio. “This reflects the re- emergence of deflationary fears. The U.S. is at the center of de-levering as opposed to accelerating growth.”

Gross had said during the midst of the credit crunch that Treasuries offered little value as investors seeking a refuge from turmoil in global financial markets drove yields to record lows in December. He boosted the $177.5 billion Total Return Fund’s investment in government-related bonds to 44 percent of assets, the most since August 2004, from 25 percent in July, according data released earlier this month on Pimco’s Web site. The fund cut mortgage debt to 38 percent from 47 percent.

…Officials at Pimco have forecast a “new normal” in the global economy that will include heightened government regulation, lower consumption and slower growth. The economy will likely expand at a 2 percent to 3 percent rate going forward, Gross said.

The world’s largest economy shrank at a 1.2 percent annual rate from April to June, more than the originally reported 1 percent contraction, according to a Bloomberg News survey before the Commerce Department’s Sept. 30 report. The jobless rate climbed to 9.8 percent this month, from 9.7 percent in August, according to a separate Bloomberg survey before the Labor Department reports figures on Oct. 2.

Read the full article here

Let’s look at today’s unemployment numbers. This was not the way one would want to celebrate Labor Day. Unemployment rose to 9.7%. Some take comfort in that unemployment in the Establishment Survey (where they call existing business and poll them) was only down by 216,000, which admittedly is better than 600,000 but is still a very bad number. Rising unemployment is not the stuff that inflation is typically made of. And there are reasons to think the picture may be worse than that. Here are a few thoughts from David Rosenberg:

“What was really key were the details of the Household Survey, which provide a rather alarming picture of what is happening in the labor market.

“First, employment in this survey showed a plunge of 392,000, but that number was flattered by a surge in self-employment (whether these newly minted consultants were making any money is another story) as wage & salary workers (the ones that work at companies, big and small) plunged 637,000 — the largest decline since March (when the stock market was testing its lows for the cycle). As an aside, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also publishes a number from the Household survey that is comparable to the nonfarm survey (dubbed the population and payroll-adjusted Household number), and on this basis, employment sank — brace yourself — by over 1 million, which is unprecedented. We shall see if the nattering nabobs of positivity discuss that particularly statistic in their post-payroll assessments; we are not exactly holding our breath.”

The ISM numbers came out this week and, while manufacturing is up, the service industry (which is far larger) is still contracting, and the employment elements in the surveys show employers are still planning to cut jobs. Think about almost 11% unemployment next summer in the middle of the political season. Watch the competition among politicians to demonstrate they care and “get it.” And watch as they spend your money to show how much they care.

And from the above mentioned Liscio Report: “As we outlined back in May, financial crises hammer employment, resulting in average losses of 6.3% followed by a long flat line. We hate to point it out, but we’re currently down 4.8% from the December 2007 onset, and if US job losses in this recession stay in line with the major financial recessions in “advanced” countries studied by the IMF, we stand to lose another 1.8 million jobs. Some of those will likely be taken out in upcoming benchmarks, stimulus money has some clout, and no one has a reliable crystal ball, but we need to remember where we are in a painful cycle if we see some hopeful flickers.”

That would take us to well over 11% unemployment.

Interesting statistic. Want to know where wages are rising? Think federal government workers. The gap between civilian and government workers was less than $13,000 nine years ago, but now is almost $30,000. Inflation has been 24%, but government wages are up 55%. According to a recent release from Rasmussen Reports, a government job remains “the top employment choice in today’s economic environment.” (chart from Clusterstock)

States, counties, and cities are having to make deep cuts, in both jobs and programs. Today’s Wall Street Journal talks about the cuts in state after state. States cannot print money like the US can, so at some point they have to either raise taxes or cut spending to balance their budgets. Raising taxes just makes it less profitable for businesses to remain in your state. There is a very high correlation with high state taxes and unemployment.

The following chart shows how rapidly income taxes are falling. Sales tax receipts are down. At some point voters are going to demand that their federal government show some of the same restraint that households, cities, and counties are being forced into. My bet is that next year raises for government workers, even those in unions, will come under attack. They won’t be cut, but watch as political backlash builds.

Without federal stimulus, the GDP of the US would have been over minus 6% in the second quarter, not the minus 1% it was. The third quarter would be flat to down and not the plus 3% it is likely to be. Housing and autos will turn down as the stimulus on those markets goes away.

I think it is very possible we will see a negative GDP by the first quarter of next year. Unemployment will still be rising. Deflation will be more of a problem, because the housing component (the largest portion of the consumer-inflation index), based roughly on rentals, is clearly under pressure. While we don’t have enough space this week to go into detail, savings are up and consumer spending is down. Without the stimulus, things would be much worse.

Here’s the kicker. Expect to see a big push for another large stimulus package next spring (and maybe sooner), as the effects of the current one wear off. The government wants to bring back demand by getting consumers to spend again. And you can count on unemployment benefits being extended. A tax holiday on Social Security taxes below a certain income? In the short run they can do it, but at a long-run cost.

It is going to be hard for a Democratic administration to not push for another large stimulus. That is what Krugman and his fellow travelers will be pushing. Classic Keynesian thinking wants both for the government to run large deficits and for the central bank to print more money. Remember, last year I said that the Fed would print a lot more money than they are talking about in the current plans. They are going to have the cover to do so, because deflation is going to be seen as the problem.

Next week, we will look at money supply and the velocity of money, savings, consumer demand, and more as we further explore the complex molecule that is deflation.

But one last thought, as I have had a lot of questions on gold recently. “Isn’t gold telling us that inflation is coming back?” The answer is no. Since the early ’80s the correlation between gold and inflation has dropped to zero. Gold has had very little to say in the last 30 years about inflation.

But what it may be saying is that paper currencies are a problem. Gold is going up not only in dollar terms, but in euros, pounds, yen, and more. My view is that gold should be seen as a neutral currency. The dollar is the worst currency in the world, except for all the others. Is it possible the Fed will not respond and print more money next year? Sure. And the dollar could rise as deflation kicks in. The only time we saw the purchasing power of the dollar rise in a sustained manner was during deflation, in the last century.

The race is not always to the swiftest or the fight to the strongest, but that’s the way to bet. And right now, my bet is the Fed will print money to fight a double-dip recession and deflation. And gold would be one way to play that bet.

“I could go on, reintroducing the negatives of an aging boomer society not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Increased health care may be GDP positive, but it’s only a plus from a “broken window” point of view. Far better to have a younger, healthier society than to spend trillions fixing up an aging, increasingly overweight and diabetic one. Same thing goes for energy. Far easier and more profitable to pump oil out of the Yates Field in Texas or even Prudhoe Bay than to spend trillions on a new “green” society. Our world, and the world’s world, is changing significantly, leading to slower growth accompanied by a redefined public/private partnership.”

The investment implications of this New Normal evolution cannot easily be modeled econometrically, quantitatively, or statistically. The applicable word in New Normal is, of course, “new.” The successful investor during this transition will be one with common sense and importantly the powers of intuition, observation, and the willingness to accept uncertain outcomes.

Gross sees global policy rates remaining low for extended periods of time. The extent and duration of quantitative easing, term financing and fiscal stimulation efforts are keys to future investment returns across a multitude of asset categories, both domestically and globally. Investors should continue to anticipate and, if necessary, shake hands with government policies, utilizing leverage and/or guarantees to their benefit. Asia and Asian-connected economies, including Australia and Brazil, will dominate future global growth.  Lastly, Gross notes that the US Dollar is vulnerable on a long-term basis.

You can read his full outlook after the jump…

Analyzing why people play golf is like exploring the intricacies of string theory – there are so many permutations lacking scientific observation that physicists or golfers can pretty darn well say anything they like and the explanation might stick. When it comes to whacking that little white ball, the possibilities are nearly endless: People play to relax, to be with friends, to get close to Mother Nature, to enhance business connections, to compete and excel. Gosh, I don’t know, the Zen explanation for why we play golf could even resemble the old saw about climbing a mountain: People golf because it’s there. Whatever the reason, it is the most frustrating, damnable game ever conceived – alternately elevating and depressing you within the span of mere minutes. I love golf. No, I hate it.

Personally, the reason that golf draws me to its intricate web of psychological entrapment is epitomized by a simple six-inch trophy: a chartreuse ball resting on top of its ebony base, preening on a bookshelf in the family room at our desert home. Its inscription reads, “Hole in one, March 15^th, 1990, 14^th hole Desert Course, 155 yards.” Well and good, I suppose – the ace of my life – except it wasn’t. It was the ace of my wife. Above the inscription rests the name Sue – not Bill – Gross. It was a great shot but it wasn’t my shot, and I guess therein lies the explanation for why I continue to tee it up.

Actually, two years ago I did tee it up in the sweltering 105° June heat of the Palm Springs desert. No one, of course, was crazy enough to be with me including my “ace” role model wife who was sipping a cool lemonade in the comfort of our air-conditioned home. Now, there is an “unwritten” rule in golf that in order to be official, a hole-in-one has to be witnessed, and that you have to play a full 18 holes. Otherwise, I suppose, you could stand on the tee with a bucket of balls and hit hundreds or thousands until one of the little guys went in – whatever. The fact is, on this particular day, I was playing only one ball, but I was alone, and – good God! – it went in! The trophy with ebony base and spanking white Titleist ball would read: “Hole in one, June 7^th, 2007, 17^th hole, Mountain Course, 139 yards.” Or was it? Does a falling tree make a sound in the middle of a forest if no one’s there? Is a hole-in-one a hole-in-one if no one else saw it? I say emphatically – yes! That damn ball went in and later that day Sue agreed with me (although she had a funny look in her eye – especially since she didn’t know a thing about the rules of golf). No one else though. No one else agrees with me. Not a soul. I suspect they’re jealous and, in fact, I’ve seen a few of them hitting buckets of balls at dusk from that very same tee when they think nobody’s looking. I’m watching, though, which brings up a funny question. If they sunk one, would theirs be a hole-in-one because I was a witness? Like I said – a damnable game.

“Is a hole-in-one a hole-in-one” may not strike you as the most critical question of the hour, and I would readily agree. “Will we have a New Normal global economy (and investment market)?” would probably usurp it on even Tiger Woods’s top ten list. This “new” vs. “old” normal dichotomy was perhaps best contrasted by Barton Biggs, as I heard him on Bloomberg Radio in early 2009, when he said he was a “child of the bull market.” I thought that was a brilliant phrase, and Barton is a brilliant phrase-maker. He went on to say though, that his point was that for as long as he’s been in the business – and that’s a long time – it has paid to buy the dips, because markets, economies, profits, and assets always rebounded and went to higher levels. That is not only the way that he learned it, but that is the way, basically, that capitalism is supposed to work. Economies grow, profits grow, just like children do. I think that’s why he said he was a child of the bull market, not just because he had experienced it for so long, but also because economic growth and higher asset prices are almost invariably a natural evolution, much like the maturation of a person. That’s how people grow, and so I think Barton was saying that capitalism just grows that way too.

Well, the surprise is that there’s been a significant break in that growth pattern, because of delevering, deglobalization, and reregulation. All of those three in combination, to us at PIMCO, means that if you are a child of the bull market, it’s time to grow up and become a chastened adult; it’s time to recognize that things have changed and that they will continue to change for the next – yes, the next 10 years and maybe even the next 20 years. We are heading into what we call the New Normal, which is a period of time in which economies grow very slowly as opposed to growing like weeds, the way children do; in which profits are relatively static; in which the government plays a significant role in terms of deficits and reregulation and control of the economy; in which the consumer stops shopping until he drops and begins, as they do in Japan (to be a little ghoulish), starts saving to the grave.

This focus on the DDRs – delevering, deglobalization, and reregulation – may be conceptually understandable, but nevertheless still a little hard to get one’s arms around. Why would they necessarily lead to a new, slower growth normal? A little easier to grasp might be the following approach, which feeds off the same concept, but which extends it a little further by suggesting that DD and R lead to a number of broken business or economic models that may forever change the world we once knew and make even Barton Biggs a chastened adult. They are as follows:

I could go on, reintroducing the negatives of an aging boomer society not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Increased health care may be GDP positive, but it’s only a plus from a “broken window” point of view. Far better to have a younger, healthier society than to spend trillions fixing up an aging, increasingly overweight and diabetic one. Same thing goes for energy. Far easier and more profitable to pump oil out of the Yates Field in Texas or even Prudhoe Bay than to spend trillions on a new “green” society. Our world, and the world’s world, is changing significantly, leading to slower growth accompanied by a redefined public/private partnership.

The investment implications of this New Normal evolution cannot easily be modeled econometrically, quantitatively, or statistically. The applicable word in New Normal is, of course, “new.” The successful investor during this transition will be one with common sense and importantly the powers of intuition, observation, and the willingness to accept uncertain outcomes. As of now, PIMCO observes that the highest probabilities favor the following strategic conclusions:

1. Global policy rates will remain low for extended periods of time.
2. The extent and duration of quantitative easing, term financing and fiscal stimulation efforts are keys to future investment returns across a multitude of asset categories, both domestically and globally.
3. Investors should continue to anticipate and, if necessary, shake hands with government policies, utilizing leverage and/or guarantees to their benefit.
4. Asia and Asian-connected economies (Australia, Brazil) will dominate future global growth.
5. The dollar is vulnerable on a long-term basis.

Like playing in an Open Championship, future golfers/investors need to play conservatively and avoid critical mistakes. An “even par” scorecard (plus some hard earned alpha) may be enough to hoist the trophy in a New Normal world. Holes-in-one? Maybe if you’re lucky. But make sure someone’s watching, and that their eyes are focused on the New Normal. As for golf, even Sue, my only supporter, has asked me to move my ball, on its own ebony base, away from her more authentic and perhaps the still solitary ace made by Gross family golfers. What a damnable condition.

William H. Gross
Managing Director