An Ugly Balance Sheet Indeed

Mark Thoma:

This is What a Balance-Sheet Recession Looks Like, and It’s Not Pretty:

Stephen Gordon says these graphs make him grateful that Canada is not the US:

This is what a balance-sheet recession looks like, and it’s not pretty, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: I had never heard the expression “balance-sheet recession” before this recent episode, and it’s time I got around a comparison of the household balance sheets of the US and Canada. Of all my “Canada is not the US” posts, this is the one that makes me most grateful.

The quarterly data goes back to 1990, and it’s good to put the last few years in context. I’ve scaled all the series by price (the consumption spending deflator) and population. Here is the net worth series:

Wci1

There’s been talk of a Japan-like ‘lost decade’ in the US; that seems optimistic. US real per capita net worth is back to what it was back in 1999.

The US problem is on the assets side:

Wci2

The effect of the recent recession on assets in Canada is similar to that of the demise of the dot-com boom.

Aggregate household liabilities have also fallen in the US, but as can be seen in the net worth data, not by enough:

Wci3

Few will be surprised to learn that the collapse of US house prices had an important effect on US asset holdings:

Wci4

Although the fall in US housing assets was more dramatic, other assets lost value as well:

Wci5

And lastly (although if someone can think of another interesting graph, I may add it), here is real per capita housing equity:

Wci6

The US data go back to 1952, so I was able to check the last time the real, per capita value of US housing equity was at its current level. Even after looking at all of these graphs, the answer astonished me: 1978. Nineteen seventy-freaking-eight.

(Via Economist’s View (Mark Thoma).)

Sharing Prosperity: Obama’s Economic Plan for Small Business

Obama does have quite the plan. It is a mixed bag to be sure, as anything political would be, but it is both a sound and refreshingly moral plan to help this economy work for all Americans.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama once spoke to CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo about the economy. Bartiromo made the usual comments an ideologically minded supply-sider might make, and Obama true to form, struck his usual centrist tone:

The one thing you can be assured of is I’m not going to be making these [economic] decisions based on ideology. I’m not a dogmatist…I believe in the market. I believe in entrepreneurship. I believe in opportunity. I believe in capitalism. And I want to do what works, but what I want to make sure of is it works for all America and not just a small sliver of America.

Obama does have quite the plan. It is a mixed bag to be sure, as anything political would be, but it is both a sound and refreshingly moral plan to help this economy work for all Americans. Instead of government spending per se, it consists of government investment, a key distinction from leftist ideological choices. It provides for targeted tax relief to the engines of our economy: the consumer and the more importantly small business. As a progressive he includes union protection, but departs from political pandering and opts for sensible regulation. See a pattern? I’ve said to my progressive/liberal friends that if they don’t get a pro-business, pro-growth policy that expresses their ideals and values, they might was well pack it in to conservatives whose policies smack of trickle down, faith based “economics.” No government in a free economy creates jobs. Businesses do and they don’t do so out of charity or good will. They do so out of necessity or incentive. So there has to be a system of carrots and sticks, that forces them to, as Taylor put it, “share in the surplus.” So to create jobs, you have to be pro-business in some way, and refreshingly Obama does not disappoint. More on this later.

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