Corporations Are Begging: We Need More Inflation!
Friday, January 25, 2013 at 5:10PM Hasbro, the second largest toymaker in the US behind Mattel, confessed that it would miss fourth-quarter revenue estimates. Christmas wasn’t kind. Despite “double digit growth in our emerging markets business,” as CEO Brian Goldner said, revenues fell by 2% for 2012 and by 3.8% for the quarter. But 4% inflation, preferably more, would have covered up that debacle.
The consequences are brutal. There will be a pile of restructuring charges, and 10% of the people will be axed—a collective punishment that the Romans used to dish out to lackadaisical legionnaires. They called it “decimation” (Latin for “removal of the tenth”). One in ten soldiers, determined by drawing lots, would be stoned or clubbed to death by his buddies. It did wonders for morale, and the whole empire collapsed.
Procter & Gamble, the consumer products giant with a myriad of ubiquitous brands, brimmed with optimism in its earnings call on Friday as CFO Jon Moeller praised its “growth strategy.” But in the end, sales grew only 2%, about the rate of inflation. It’s tough out there.
A decimation had already been announced last February: 10% of non-manufacturing employees, “roughly 5,700 roles,” he said. Not people, but “roles.” 5,500 of these roles were already gone. The rest would be gone soon. Ahead of schedule. But it still wasn’t enough. In November, P&G “committed to do more,” that is axe another 2% to 4% of “non-manufacturing enrollment,” but “any additional enrollment progress”—enrollment progress!—in fiscal 2013 would give P&G a “head start” for their 2014 to 2016 “enrollment objectives” [for a peculiar American conundrum, read Making Heroes of Those Who Slash Jobs].
But why this decimation? Sales growth. Or rather, the lack thereof. Which Moeller said, would be “1% to 2%.” Below the rate of inflation. Other large companies are in a similar predicament. Microsoft, for example, admitted on Thursday that its revenues rose a paltry 3%. Inflation is just too embarrassingly low for these corporate giants that are dependent on incessant price increases to doll up their top line.
Fed to the rescue! And it has been trying. After years of escalating waves of QE, the Fed has finally managed to print so much money that its balance sheet officially as of Friday, and for the first time in US history, broke through the $3 trillion mark. Here is a screenshot to eternalize the historic event:
On August 1, 2007, when the prior all-time-craziest Fed-inspired credit bubble was showing signs of blowing up, there were “only” $874 billion in assets on that balance sheet. Over the last two months alone, the Fed printed enough dollars to mop up $160.4 billion in securities. The two largest asset groups on the balance sheet: US Treasuries ($1.697 trillion) and mortgage-backed securities ($983 billion). Every month the Fed will add $45 billion in Treasuries and $40 in mortgage-backed securities. Until it comes up with something new.
Other central banks have also run their printing presses until they’re white hot. As all this money went looking for things to buy, it pushed bonds into the stratosphere, and yields into hell. Risk is no longer compensated. Some governments have been borrowing at negative yields. Even 10-year Treasuries yield less than inflation. And junk bonds with a considerable chance of default, if the free money ever dries up, yield as little as a 1-year FDIC-insured CD used to yield before the financial crisis. Commodity prices have been driven up. Food has become unaffordable for many people in poorer parts of the world. And equities have been driven to lofty heights. China just warned that “hot money” fresh off the US and Japanese presses would wash over China and drive asset bubbles to even more insane and dangerous heights.
But the one thing all this money-printing just hasn’t done in the US in 2012 is create the kind of substantive inflation that a lot of corporations need to beautify their revenues. Inflation creates the pretense of growth—just like salaries that have been rising, but less than inflation. It makes things look good on the surface, and analysts can go around and hype the company’s “growth strategy,” and everybody is happy. Reality be damned.
Meanwhile, European talking heads have been reassuring us on an hourly basis that the worst of the debt crisis is over. But the Japanese trade deficit, a measure of reality, not words, tells a different story about the crisis in Europe. And about troubles coming to a boil in China. But neither can be cured by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan to demolish the yen. Read.... What the Japanese Trade Deficit Says About the Fraying Fabric In China And Europe.
Reader Comments (3)
-government sector (too many jobs with hardly any real added value simply because the road from added value to service provided (and jobs is largely obscured).
-financial sector (a lot is hardly useful for the economy as a whole (but made necessary by all sort of legislation); wages are too high compared to the market (but solved by the oligopoly pricingpower); takes ages before we see the new developments like internet being transformed into the business of banks (truckloads of branches with hardly any use), also oligopolical pricing power, where the price of the product is mainly determined by the cost structure that is (and as everybody is doing that...);
-simple work (while be automated in high wage societies;
-office folks (factories have been made efficient, now automation is done at office level (mainly in the simpler jobs that can easily be automated) and lets be hones half the paperwork in the average office is costing more than it brings.
What we will see in a long term crisis that these jobs become in the firing line. Or there will be a larger chance thereon. And with its own dynamics (like governmentjobs very slowly).
P&G furthermore seems to have not a real recession strategy. Gambled too much on their main markets going back to normal and relatively quick. Wrong on both counts, several didnot go back to normal and donot look doing so in the near future. Unilever does for once a much better job here. Moved more to cheaper sort products (already 1 or 2 year ago).
Getting rid of high cost office workers would imho have been the strategy even if we didnot have had a crisis anyway. Pure reduction plus a move to lower wage countries. So I get the impression that it is not totally unconvenient as well.