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Jim Chanos: U.S. Economy is Worse Than You Think


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2017 Jul 1, 3:40pm   3,021 views  14 comments

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The famed short-seller offers a mid-2017 reality check for “fake fiscal news,” economic pipe dreams, and “portents of even worse things”.

Lynn Parramore: Let’s talk about perceptions of the U.S. economy. You’ve pointed out that surveys asking how people feel about the economy show optimism, while actual hard numbers look disappointing. What do you make of this gap ?

Jim Chanos: It’s intriguing that people are reporting they’re feeling better, particularly in the corporate sector, but even among consumers. People say they feel good about the economy and yet they apparently don’t have any money at the end of every month to keep spending.

We’re seeing weak consumer spending numbers in both auto and housing, which are big drivers of the economy. With unemployment so low and the expansion where it is, these figures should be better than they are. There are portents of even worse things when you look at state and federal tax receipts, which are down, and other leading indicators.

It could all just be a soft spot in an ongoing expansion — time will tell. But the narrative we were told is that animal spirits would take us to the next level of economic activity. That clearly is not happening in mid-2017. We’re 8 years into an economic expansion, and economists say that the modern U.S. economy has never gone more than 10 years without a recession. So as recoveries go we are well into it.

LP: What about the health care industry? What impact would the GOP plans have on the economy?

The Senate bill is really onerous on the backs of consumers and patients. It appears that they need it to get tax cuts and tax reform done. But I don’t think the GOP understands the political minefield they’re laying for themselves here.

LP: In terms of the energy business, how is it changing and how do those changes impact the economic road ahead?

JC: The energy business will be far more troubled going forward. Much of it is uneconomical.

LP: Much has been made of the tech companies, the celebrated “disrupters,” as drivers of American prosperity. What’s your view of these firms, the Facebooks and Ubers and Netflixes?

JC: With the exception of Facebook, the disrupters — Netflix, Uber, etc.— don’t seem to be scaling. The Harvard Business Review has a great story out which concludes that unlike dotcom 1.0 when Amazon and Facebook were inventing whole new markets and were relatively cash-flow positive right away, companies like Uber and Tesla are more personal fiefdoms of their CEOs.

LP: What about Trump’s infrastructure proposals? Could they help the economy?

JC: That’s just another sort of fake fiscal news, if you will. It’s going to be public-private partnerships. I have a long experience with those: I was short Macquarie Bank, which was the originator of these sorts of things in ’05-’06.

LP: Who is actually going to benefit from such projects?

JC: In my own view, these public-private projects are not what core supporters thought they were getting with Trump. It’s going to be great for Wall Street investment banks, but I’m skeptical that a lot of people are going to be able to get excited about the economic growth coming from them. Rural people won’t benefit from them.

LP: How serious do you view the weaknesses in the economy we’ve discussed?

JC: One of these things that we’ve talked about wouldn’t be so bad, but you put them all together and the U.S. economy doesn’t look so great.

The big 3 drivers are still housing, autos, and health care. They disproportionately count for a huge amount of activity. What we see is that housing has stalled, autos have turned down, and health care is possibly about to turn down. Retail is also turning down.

Full Article with more details on all bold headings. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/jim-chanos-u-s-economy-is-worse-than-you-think

Related: Harvard Business Review article cited in main post: https://hbr.org/2017/06/is-america-encouraging-the-wrong-kind-of-entrepreneurship

#Economics #ForecastGoingFoward #BusinessCycles

Comments 1 - 14 of 14        Search these comments

1   FortWayne   2017 Jul 1, 4:00pm  

Liberals spent 8 years trying to save the endangered species of homosexuals and transexuals instead of solving economic problems, followed up by anti business Obamacare and other crapy legislations. No wonder we are still suffering from that.

2   anonymous   2017 Jul 1, 5:05pm  

Where is Logan? Future demographics are dismal and could lead to long-term deflation:
https://econimica.blogspot.co.nz/2017/06/why-next-recession-will-morph-into.html

3   HEY YOU   2017 Jul 1, 5:30pm  

8 years of Bush/Rep/Con ended with a bailout of the TBTF.
What a fubar!
FUCKING SOCIALISTS!

4   RWSGFY   2017 Jul 1, 5:32pm  

anonymous says

The Harvard Business Review has a great story out which concludes that unlike dotcom 1.0 when Amazon and Facebook were inventing whole new markets and were relatively cash-flow positive right away,

What are these guys smoking? Facebook wasn't even around during dotcom 1.0 and Amazon wasn't cash positive.

Shall we assume the rest of the interview is BS too?

5   RWSGFY   2017 Jul 1, 6:12pm  

anonymous says

Can you include the rest of the verbiage next time since it was a comparison?

"companies like Uber and Tesla are more personal fiefdoms of their CEOs".

What would it change? If the left side of the comparison is factually incorrect, what's the point in comparing BS to anything? And it's not like Amazon or FB at some point weren't non-cash-positive "personal fiefdoms" of Bezos and Zuk respectively.

Seems like that dude is just running his mouth and talking his book without any regard to the facts on the ground.

6   Strategist   2017 Jul 1, 6:26pm  

anonymous says

Hey, the stock market just hit an all time high.

7   Bellingham Bill   2017 Jul 1, 9:56pm  

I think I lost an IQ point or two reading this drivel.

"We’re 8 years into an economic expansion, and economists say that the modern U.S. economy has never gone more than 10 years without a recession"

. . .

this is not the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, or 00s.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ALTSALES

shows new car sales aren't down all that much.

shows rents are steady at +4% annual rises, this is not sector weakness.

(but it's also why nobody has any money to spend of course)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST

housing starts are still at recessionary levels but that's just demographics

red is population age 25-54 and blue is cumulative housing starts since 1961

as for health care, the GOP killing the Medicaid expansion and PPACA premium subsidies and limiting cost inflation would be indeed a medium term headwind, but that will be overwhelmed by the medical needs of the boomers, age 53 to 71 this year.

8   Bellingham Bill   2017 Jul 2, 10:56am  

PCGyver says

That were caused by who's tax cuts and wars?

2001-2003 tax cuts and the misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq weren't what caused the GFC.

This was:

real (2009-dollars) annual per-capita consumer debt take-on

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=egOq

9   Bellingham Bill   2017 Jul 2, 11:01am  

anonymous says

U.S. auto sales on track to drop for 6th straight month in June. June is expected to cap the weakest first-half to a year for U.S. light-vehicle demand since 2014.

Since 2014? That doesn't sound serious.

A lot of cars were sold 1999-2007 and they're all still on the road.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ALTSALES

After crashing 2008-2010, sales have returned to that level, but now that the boomers are actually leaving their driving years (median boomer is 62 this year) and Gen Y is hitting their 30s (median Gen Y is 26) I don't expect a lot of growth in auto sales going forward.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU00000060

^ peak consumer

10   Bellingham Bill   2017 Jul 2, 11:06am  

anonymous says

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/21-healthcare-layoffs-so-far-in-2017.html

these are all mickey mouse layoffs. Zenefits? Rackspace? Theranos?

This is not to say that hospitals are going to do well going forward. They will be well and truly fucked if & when the GOP succeeds in torpedoing the PPACA.

11   Bellingham Bill   2017 Jul 2, 11:40am  

this is just counting up the live births, not immigration.

which is pretty scary since the Bureau of Labor Statistics says there were 126,000 million people in this cohort in 2008.

Where'd these ~50M people come from if they weren't born here?? The Moon? Do we have a zombie problem the BLS isn't telling us about??

12   curious2   2017 Jul 2, 12:46pm  

Bellingham Bill says

Where'd these ~50M people come from if they weren't born here?

Decades of immigration around 1M/yr, peaking above 1.8M in 1990, 27 years ago.

13   Bellingham Bill   2017 Jul 2, 1:26pm  

correct!

(except apparently the peak was the later 1990s)

14   curious2   2017 Jul 2, 1:38pm  

Bellingham Bill says

except apparently

Different definitions depending on whether you count work visas or only citizenship. Related to workforce, the 1990 peak included visas. That may have caused a later peak in citizenship.

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