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Risque croissant de récession et de crise en 2020

Jun 14, 2019 Nouriel Roubini

NEW YORK – L’été dernier, mon collègue Brunello Rosa et moi-même identifiions dix risques potentiels susceptibles d’engendrer une récession aux États-Unis et dans le reste du monde en 2020. Neuf de ces risques existent toujours aujourd’hui.

La plupart concernent directement les États-Unis. Les conflits commerciaux avec la Chine et d’autres pays, ainsi que les restrictions sur les migrations, l’investissement direct étranger et les transferts technologiques, pourraient avoir de profondes conséquences sur les chaînes d’approvisionnement mondiales, et accentuer la menace d’une stagflation (ralentissement de la croissance et augmentation de l’inflation). Le risque de diminution de la croissance américaine est par ailleurs d’autant plus réel aujourd’hui que la relance associée à la législation fiscale de 2017 a fait son temps.

Dans le même temps, les marchés boursiers américains sont restés effervescents depuis notre article initial. D’autres risques viennent s’y ajouter en raison du creusement de nouvelles formes de dette, notamment sur de nombreux marchés émergents, où l’emprunt est en grande partie libellé en devises étrangères. La capacité des banques centrales à faire office de prêteurs de dernier recours devenant de plus en plus limitée, les marchés financiers illiquides sont vulnérables aux « krachs éclairs » et autres perturbations, dont l’une pourrait provenir du président américain Donald Trump, qui pourrait être tenté de déclencher une crise de politique étrangère (la diversion dont nous parlions) avec un pays comme l’Iran. Une telle démarche le servirait sans doute dans les sondages, mais pourrait également déclencher un choc pétrolier.

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Nouriel Roubini

Writing for PS since 2007
156 Commentaries

Nouriel Roubini, Professor Emeritus at New York University’s Stern School of Business, is Chief Economist at Atlas Capital Team and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates. He is a former senior economist for international affairs in the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank, and was Professor of Economics at New York University's Stern School of Business. His website is NourielRoubini.com, and he is the host of NourielToday.com.

Populist Plutocracy and the Future of America
The Washington Post/Getty Images

Populist Plutocracy and the Future of America

Nouriel Roubini
In the first year of his presidency, Donald Trump has consistently sold out the blue-collar, socially conservative whites who brought him to power, while pursuing policies to enrich his fellow plutocrats. Sooner or later, Trump's core supporters will wake up to this fact, so it is worth asking how far he might go to keep them on his side.
warns that Donald Trump may be willing to try anything to maintain the support of the voters he's betraying.

51
Understanding the Fed’s Dovish Turn
Joshua Roberts/Getty Images

Understanding the Fed’s Dovish Turn

Nouriel Roubini sees five factors contributing to US central bankers' decision to suspend monetary-policy tightening.

4
The Global Consequences of a Sino-American Cold War
Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images

The Global Consequences of a Sino-American Cold War

Nouriel Roubini warns that a full decoupling of the world's two largest economies would force everyone else to choose sides.

21

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 15 Comments on this article

Elizabeth Pula Jul 5, 2019

Great macro view. Here is a link that very succinctly explains with specific examples just how this all happens for the little guy down on earth scrambling for a job OR invests (OMG- what can I invest in???) on the real streets globally:

https://wolfstreet.com/2019/07/04/when-the-music-of-the-wealth-effect-stops/

Musical chairs can really cause a lot of the little guys to wind up right on the floor on their-you-know-whats!
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Mark Harridge Jun 25, 2019

Now if there was only a nascent global technology which could level the playing field?
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Elizabeth Pula Jun 17, 2019

Securing supply chains may not even be necessary if there is no real demand for any product that could be supplied through those supply chains. If the following link is the great example of the business model trends for the 21st century, the next generation won't even be capable of functioning, especially while digesting fake-meat-products with escalated pricing correlated to increase profits as absolutely minimal nutritional also strategically increases, due to consumption.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-11/comcast-scion-tucker-roberts-leads-the-company-into-e-sports?srnd=businessweek-v2

The US is already out-of-the-international markets, refusing to acknowledge it's real role as now only the loss-leader as a dying gatekeeper for Chinese entrepreneurial skill and tactical maneuvers. Apple phones sure aren't a close match to Huawei. The last moves of bullying the rest of the world have only confirmed that US multi-nationals don't even comprehend their own suicide mission is quite successful. The US doesn't have any power to force any compromise of any thing.

US consumers won't even have to boycott as a retaliatory populist action. It's getting pretty obvious the majority are fighting to keep even the lousy roofs over their heads. With double-taxation, they really won't even have to worry anymore about much of anything. If they can't hardly consume, they sure don't have to think about it. The elites don't have to worry either, they have the masses exactly where they want them, as they scoop up the remaining spoils that they missed on the most recent go-round. No one person, male or female can elicit a 20% population response on-the-street anywhere in the US.

New teams of players of video-gamers, while the majority view players playing for money is a great non-supply-chain business model that will surely replicate world-wide. What a great loss-leader ideal! Bring it on to the new successful disruptive platforms to generate money for nothing. Does that business model create real take-away value anywhere for anyone? The pretend combat zones in an already fragile global economy may have to become real combat zones to create real destruction to allow real re-creation into some value somewhere, into some real forms, from what may be left to use in some way. That is, if anything is left at all. So what? Who gives a flip? Who can give a flip?
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B Wilds Jun 17, 2019

In many ways, the Fed has put America and the global economy on a path that mirrors the same unsuccessful path taken by Japan. This path avoided real reform and bailed out the very people that caused many of Japan's problems leading to "lost decades" of growth.

The bottom-line is much of the world may well be looking at a version of the "Japan Syndrome" with stagflation. This translates into years of slow growth coupled with inflation or a protracted period of stagflation.More on this subject in the article below.

https://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2019/06/fed-lowering-interest-rates-will-do.html
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Enrique Woll Battistini Jun 17, 2019

In any and every case, one immediate reason why placing the economy exceedingly in the hands of Government would be unacceptable is that, contrary to the teachings of Neo-Classical Economics, and Modern Monetary Theory, it does matter how money is spent, and whether it goes to produce shoes or guns always make a difference, but in the case of increases in the money supply, especially the large ones that would likely result from application of the Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin, how it is spent greatly matters, especially in the first go-around of its endless circulation throughout the economy. The question would be then, who should be doing the first spending and the primary spending? The Government or The People? And lastly, obviously, Central Banks should continue to exist, and to exercise their traditional control over the money supply and inflation, until a superior type of institution can take their place.

https://www.academia.edu/37950503/FACEBOOK_-_My_Commentary_on_the_Article_What_Is_Modern_Monetary_Theory_-_2013031902
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Ben Leet Jun 16, 2019

Taxing wealth (financial assets) is a good alternative now. Since January, 2009, when “total household net worth” stood at $48 trillion in the U.S., private “net worth” has grown to about $109 trillion. (See Fed’s Flow of Funds report, page 2, and Table B.101) The federal government spent $4.1 trillion in 2018 for comparison, and still ran a deficit of $500 billion. So taxing the doubling of financial assets arises as a prime target for funding, if and when the turmoil begins in serious. Credit Suisse Bank’s Global Wealth Report also shows large gains of wealth during the past 10 years. Why are those resources left untouched? Furthermore, FDR succeeded in dropping the unemployment rate from 25% in 1933 to 9.6% in 1937 (see Marshall Auerback’s essay “The Real Lesson from the Great Depression.”) That was achieved by direct government employment, which is uncommon, almost unheard of, but still available and needed, in fact it should be a permanent feature to effectively eliminate unemployment. And why not? Unemployment is good? FDR proposed a new Economic Bill of Rights towards the end of his life, and we still need to enact those rights. It’s not such a radical concept. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that “average weekly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers” was higher in 1965 than in 2019, and the BEA shows (Table 2.1) that the “disposable income per capita) has tripled since 1965. So go figure. I’ll put the web address for the BLS — https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000031 — We are reaching a limit to the race to the bottom, and it’s time to readjust. Recently I read an article at Truthout by David Bacon on conditions in Honduras; he stated that 46% of workers there earn less than $8 a day, less than 200 Lempira. Honduras is a large garment exporter for the U.S.. It seems criminal that our system has perpetrated so much harm in that it ensures poverty for billions, while ensuring billions for a mere 1 or 2 thousand extremely wealthy people who hoard their “financial assets”. My blog: http://benL88.blogspot.com
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Jérôme Pugnet Jun 16, 2019

Maybe not all bad if it helps ousting DJT, who knows...
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Janos Nagy Jun 16, 2019

Recession what recession?
Since globalization the USA has close to1 trillion deficit spending or 5 percent of the it's GDP on average.
And let's not talk about Canada and all the other developed countries deficit spending.
Without the USA would be in a recession in the last 15 years and Canada as well.
Of course if profits would've been reinvested in its own economic jurisdiction and not all over the world specially in Asia.
This deficit spending or injecting a trillion in the GDP of the USA and the world's economic with allowing trade deficits is the bandaid for the globalised economic in the last 15 years.
If you look at the recessions of the past it was mostly corporate profits that was in the red.
And that was a very healthy cycle in the economic
usually easing the debt levels since the corporations paid more out as incomes of the individuals than they collected.
In Canada personal debt levels jumped from around 90-100 percent to closed to 180 percent since globalization phase 1 circa 2003.
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Dan Warren Jun 16, 2019

I don't think this Holy Grail of 'Free Trade' is all you economists make it out to be.

Free trade with Canada, a true ally of ours, and a nation with the same wage rates as America is surely beneficial. So called 'free trade' with rapacious China, hellbent on surpassing the USA, is an entirely different animal.

Many Americans like myself think we would be much better off manufacturing the things we need in North America. Mexico has cheaper labor rates....why not up trade with Mexico, and stop buying the crap we get from China, which is junk which merely goes quickly into our landfills.
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hong Koh Jun 15, 2019

I am not a trained economist. However I do understand the economies of scale. This concept is usually associated with industrial production in a factory. In the modern world the economy of scale is also important when it comes to digital/cyber platforms and markets. To put it bluntly, you need people: lots of people to have the market to pay for unicorns. If you bifurcate the world ( As Kai Fu Li has said regarding the Chinese and USA digital platforms) then you reduce the economy of scale which will make the rollout of these new technologies much more limited and expensive. Imagine how much an intel chip would cost if they only had a market of 2,000,000 people not 2,000,000,000 people. There is also market timing. If you have a great product and can't get it to market at a reasonable price in a reasonable time then your competition will out flank you and your business will die or become "boutique". My point is that China has an internal economy of scale and the production facilities to exploit the new tech. America does not have enough production capacity to ramp up the hardware manufacturing quick enough to take full advantage of 5g nationwide. They can exploit it in certain cities like NY and LA. China on the other hand has enough of a ready market to digitize 1.4 billion people with 5g related products into every far flung corner of their vast land. Without free multilateral trade it is America that will lose because China will be able to sell Chinese made systems at a fraction of the price of the western systems and the BRICS and SCO nations are enough of a market for China without even worrying about the USA. This will transfer huge sums of capital towards the mass rollout of 5g/IOT/AI in the east that petro dollars will become less and less influential as the world re-gears to a cyber flow of data from a physical flow of fossil fuels.
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Godfree Roberts Jun 14, 2019

'Across the advanced economies, monetary and fiscal policymakers lack the tools needed to respond to another major downturn and financial crisis. '

China has already demonstrated, in spades, that it has the tools to respond to a major downturn, America's GFC. It can do so again, if necessary.

Roubini is a one-trick pony, as his predictions demonstrate:

2005. The Risk of a Hard Landing in China. Nouriel Roubini

2010: Hard landing coming in China. Nouriel Roubini
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