Amid all the focus on Greece this week, it’s been easy to overlook the fact that over here in Britain, we’re seeing a fair bit of economic turmoil ourselves.
We’ve got strike action by various public sector workers this morning. Putting politics aside, the bare facts are that private sector companies have to shed workers and squeeze pay and conditions when there’s not enough money to go round. It’s difficult to see why things should be any different in the public sector.
There’s no question that the private sector is still hurting too. This week has seen carnage on the UK high street, with several retailers going bust and others slashing jobs and shutting shops.
Unfortunately, there’s no sign of things getting better in the near future.
The pound is tumbling against the world’s most vulnerable currency
If you’ve been considering a holiday in the eurozone, it probably hasn’t escaped your notice that the pound has been falling against the euro in recent months. Sterling hit a high of more than €1.20 in January. Now it is back around its 2011 low point of €1.11.
How can this be? The euro is a currency whose very existence is being questioned on a daily basis.
Traders around the world have spent most of this week glued to the ridiculous spectacle of Greece voting to approve an austerity package that will be about as successful as the last one – ie not at all.
And yet, the pound can’t seem to get a break. What does that say about our economy? Nothing good, clearly.
Unfortunately it’s hard to disagree with that diagnosis.
Here’s Britain’s basic problem. Consumption still accounts for the majority of our economic growth. But the engine of that growth – the British consumer – is out of petrol.
To keep increasing your consumption, you need to get money from somewhere. Either you earn it, or you generate it from investments, or you borrow it. On the earnings front – forget it. British workers are seeing their wages collapse in real (inflation-adjusted) terms.
As for making money from your investments: the main driver of the ‘wealth’ effect in Britain is still house prices. The latest Nationwide data shows that prices were down 1.1% in June, year on year. If we want to talk real terms again, that’s a fall of more than 5%. And unless you live in London (where prices are still rising, in nominal terms at least), the picture is far worse than that.
And credit? Bank of England data out yesterday showed that credit growth slowed sharply in May.
Why is this happening?
As Richard Jeffrey of Cazenove Capital Management noted in a recent damning piece on the effects of quantitative easing, this consumer squeeze is directly due to the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.
By helping to drive up the cost of raw materials (by whichever transmission mechanism), the central banks have caused an “unprecedented” squeeze on household spending.
But what about rebalancing? Aren’t we meant to be moving from a consumer-oriented economy to a shiny future where we’re all Dyson-style rocket scientists?
I’m not entirely sceptical about rebalancing. However, it’s no miracle cure. As my colleague David Stevenson has pointed out several times in the past, manufacturing only accounts for about 13% of British GDP, compared to the two-thirds or so that’s down to consumption.
Manufacturing can grow its slice of the pie, of course it can. But that can happen either by the manufacturing sector growing, or through the consumption sector shrinking. All that needs to happen is for manufacturers to outperform the services sector.
In other words, you can have a shrinking or stagnant economy, and still get this ‘rebalancing’ we all claim to want so much. It’s just not a very pleasant way to get there.
And yet, as my colleague Merryn Somerset Webb pointed out on her blog yesterday, no one seems to have any better ideas: Why does no one have any real proposals to boost growth? And the bad news is that it could get even worse.
At our most recent roundtable, I asked if anyone present thought that interest rates would rise much by the end of next year. No one expected a serious increase: 2% was the absolute maximum.
So, I asked, does that mean you can’t see inflation rising to say, 8%? I’ll admit I was quite surprised when the response was: “Oh no, 8% is definitely a possibility. But rates still won’t rise”.
Negative real interest rates of more than 7%? That’s a scary thought, particularly if your wages aren’t going to keep up. How can you protect your wealth from that sort of damage? Our roundtable experts had a few ideas: you can read all about them in the next issue of MoneyWeek magazine, out tomorrow (if you’re not already a subscriber you can subscribe to MoneyWeek magazine).
But one thing they all agreed on was that high conviction stock-picking would become far more important. I was a tad sceptical about this. Fund managers always say it’s a stock-pickers’ market, because they’re the ones doing the stock-picking.
However, with most stock market indices likely to remain volatile and in sideways trends, it does make sense to be picky about where you invest your money. One of our newsletter writers, Dr Mike Tubbs, is very convinced of the potential for one specific small pharmaceutical stock.
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