The starting point for all of what follows is that government, if it has the will to act, is currently in the driver’s seat.  Much of the private sector is facing a terrifying confluence of crunches: supply breakdowns, demand falling off a cliff for many goods and services, and a looming shortfall of liquidity to service debt.  A wide swath of business is on the ropes and needs a rescue from government.  This puts the power in our hands if we can wield it.  Of course, with Republican dominance in Washington and the continued loyalty of the Democratic Party to the liberal wing of the plutocracy, the likelihood that we will take advantage of this moment is small.  Still, the opportunity is there, and that’s the basis for thinking ambitiously.

1. Debt-equity buyouts.  There’s a lot of business debt, and borrowers face a crisis as their earnings tumble.  Andrew Ross Sorkin proposes a scheme in which the government would offer no-interest bridge loans to any and all comers, with repayment delayed until after the immediate crisis abates.  The key condition, and just about the only one, is that recipients commit to retaining 90% of their pre-virus workforce.  Dean Baker would go further and provide direct bailout support in exchange for quid pro quo’s, like zeroing out shareholders and limiting CEO pay.

Here is another idea.  Have the government offer to purchase any and all outstanding corporate debt, converting it into an equity stake.  Wipe the debt off the books and take a public ownership position instead, which could be used to pursue objectives, like cutting pay at the top and expanding worker benefits, that the vast majority of Americans support.

2. Public voucher purchases.  For the small business and self-employed sector, particularly in services, I like the Saez-Zucman idea of having the government serve as buyer of last resort.  Specifically, I would set up a public fund to enable the government—perhaps at state and local levels—purchase vouchers for future goods.  A massage therapist, for example, could sell a quantity of vouchers for future massage sessions, providing an income stream to make it through the quarantine.  When the crisis recedes, the government would distribute these vouchers to the public, either through a highly discounted sale or even free distribution.  Perhaps the vouchers could be for steep discounts, say 80%, off the posted price to all for a bit of post-virus income as well.

Yesterday my wife Marina and I met with our personal attorney, a close friend also, to fix  some loose ends in our wills due to some recent family deaths, as well the current situation.  He also happens to sit on the Harrisonburg City Council, as well as having been Mayor for a  while and a longtime member of the city Planning Commission, someone whose competence we have great respect for.  Anyway, he noted that on April 14 the City Manager is to present a proposed budget to the City Council, and that it will have a giant hole in it given that taxes on restaurants are a significant source of revenues for the city, and while not completely shut down, restaurants are now seriously restricted in their activity, not to mention that students will not be returning this semester, and they provide a lot of business.  In short, the city will face severe budgetary problems as the now occurring recession proceeds.  It is not only Harrisonburg that faces this problem, but probably just about every state and municipality in the United States.

Obviously this is currently low on the priority list of most people, and while Congress has now voted for a stimulus bill that will help out indiviuals and businesses, and another may be on the way, so far there  has not been a whisper regarding a likely need to help out state and local governments, who, after all, contribute more to the US GDP (and employment) than does the federal government, which mostly just ransfers money, except for the DOD in substantial terms.  The problem is that unlike the federal government, nearly all state and local governments face balanced budget rules for their current activities, with most needing to pass bond referenda for specific projects in order to borrow money.  So when the revenues fall short, which they shortly will start to do for all these state governments, they will face the choice of cutting spending and laying off workers or raising taxes on populations facing sharply reduced incomes and employment.  The sooner the federal government recognizes this and starts to do something, the better, although probably for now natonal politicians are hoping this will all be over before too much damage happens to the local governments, to the extent they are thinking about this at all, which I doubt.

I note that in the Great Recession, this problem was recognized, and the 2009 fiscal stimulus plan by Obama included as about a third of its spending the distribution to state and local governments of revenue  sharing.  This did help out their  problems that arose at that time.  Doing so again I think would be wise, but again, for the moment this problem is under the radar at the national level.

Barkley Rosser

I have a post up at Seeking Alpha, taking a look at this morning’s retail sales and industrial production reports for February, and briefly considering their implications for employment in the coming months, even before the impact of coronavirus.

Here’s a graph that didn’t make it into that post, showing the past 25+ years of real retail sales (red), jobs (blue), and real aggregate payrolls (green):

For the past 11 months, real retail sales in February were only up +0.9%. We’ll never know for sure, but it is entirely possible that, even without coronavirus, real retail sales might have turned negative YoY this month, suggesting that job growth might screech to a halt in the next few months.

Also, in the more current weekly data, we got two important reads on chain store sales this morning. Both Redbook and the Retail Economist recorded surges in chain store sales last week, as consumer rushed to stockpile supplies.

As I listened to the morning news about the coronavirus crisis, I was reminded of this critique of the Eurozone:

In a recent conference, the distinguished economist Paul Krugman repeated the oft-heard critique that the eurozone is not an optimal currency area. Waltraud Schelkle disagrees with this characterisation, and argues that no country or group of countries represents an optimal currency area – one region or country always loses out from a single monetary policy. But countries can use fiscal, social and regulatory policies to overcome these difficulties. When Americans criticise the eurozone’s currency policies, she writes, they are forgetting the US dollar’s shaky start and the adjustments which had to be made to the financial system in the 19th century.

Why mention the optimal currency area debate in reference to this health crisis? This morning I heard statements like this one:

By contrast, the coronavirus crisis has started to look more like the European migration and financial crises: a symptom of globalization that can’t be held back where it started. The exploding outbreak around the Continent — officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on Wednesday — highlights both the promises and limitations of the European Union: a single, largely borderless market made up of 27 countries, each with their own governments, electorates, bureaucracies, health care systems and, as has become painfully obvious, national interests. For weeks, officials in Brussels and national capitals have called for pan-European coordination. Yet even as Italy, the bloc’s third largest economy, embraces a made-in-China solution — putting the entire country under preventative lockdown — the modus operandi across the EU remains fragmented and reactive.

We are in the middle of a flurry of decision-making on how to deal with COVID-19.  After much resistance, officials are now canceling public events, closing schools and discouraging other activities that put us in contact with each other.  Travel restrictions and possible shutdowns of workplaces, as we’ve seen in Italy, may be up next.

It’s interesting we haven’t heard anything about benefit-cost analysis in all this.  Nearly all economists profess to think that BCA is the single best decision method.  Almost every introductory economics textbook is built around benefit-cost thinking, and for decades federal regulations have mandated BCA for proposals with significant economic impacts.

But now we are facing immense choices—what could have a more drastic impact than shutting down most of the economy by fiat?—and BCA is nowhere to be found.

This weekend has continued the discouraging news: reports just about everywhere that the Young Invulnerables packed the bars Friday night; the Petri dishes of airport security lines packed with Americans returning from Europe; and personally, two friends who I have known for almost 40 years getting very sick this past week and not able to be tested for coronavirus (one of whom by the way went in to work Friday to drive school buses full of kids because so many other drivers called out). All of these are going to be vectors for continued transmission of the virus.

In that regard, let me repost the graph from Jim Bianco that I ran last week. Because we are now 4 days into his linear projection of an exponential curve of coronavirus transmissions. Here’s the graph:

And here is how his projections compare with the actual numbers I pulled each day from the Johns Hopkins site:

Seattle:

Korea:

Those bedsheets will do a great job preventing the virus from spreading.