L’environnement économique mondial est en pleine évolution et notre économiste en chef plonge dans le vif du sujet. Tout d’abord, M. Lascelles traite des événements liés aux récents ouragans aux États-Unis, des risques de récession et des baisses de taux d’intérêt. Il se penche également sur les sujets suivants :
Élection aux États-Unis
Effet des mesures de relance en Chine
Prix du pétrole et risques connexes
Brève revue de l’actualité au Canada
Tous ces sujets et plus encore sont abordés dans votre dernière vidéo #MacroMémo. (Durée : 13 minutes)
(en anglais seulement)
Durée : 12 minutes, 55 secondes
Transcription
(en anglais seulement)
00:00:05:18 - 00:00:26:09
Hello and welcome to our video #MacroMemo. As always, there's quite a bit going on.
- We'll spend a moment talking about some of the economic ramifications of recent U.S. hurricanes.
- We will acknowledge that the risk of a recession, in our view, at least, continues to fall. I'll give you a new number for that, a new probability.
- We'll talk a bit about Fed (Federal Reserve) expectations, what the next Fed decision might look like.
00:00:26:11 - 00:00:48:03
- We'll also talk about this U.S. election, which is now well under a month away from happening, and some very interesting changes in what the betting markets are saying.
- We'll talk about Chinese stimulus, which has been certainly celebrated by the Chinese stock market, if nothing else.
- And we'll also speak about the risks that surround oil prices and a quick Canadian update.
00:00:48:03 - 00:01:06:16
So that's a lot. Let me just circle to the top and jump in. We'll start with hurricanes.
Hurricane distortions: So in the U.S., Hurricanes Helene and Milton have both struck in quite short order in the U.S. southeast. Obviously, first and foremost, these are human disasters, human tragedies. Economic analysis doesn't particularly lend itself to that side of things.
00:01:06:20 - 00:01:31:17
I can say though, that there are some tentative economic implications that extend from hurricanes. And of course, people can't get to work, and/or power outages, and cleanups need to occur and so on. We are presuming that there is some damage to activity in the affected regions. Loosely speaking, we think we're talking about something like a quarter to a half percentage point chopped off annualized growth in the affected quarter.
00:01:31:19 - 00:01:47:14
It's tricky, though, because these hurricanes straddle two quarters. One came at the very end of one, and one came at the very start of the other. And in both cases, you sort of don't get the full effect and it just gets blurred across the two. In particular, for the fourth quarter, which we're in right now, you also get the rebound.
00:01:47:14 - 00:02:04:01
The bottom line here is that the effect might be a bit less visible than usual. We do think, at least in the monthly data, that we should be able to see some genuine weakness in October data. Do note then you should see a rebound in November data. Most of the damage is people not going to work.
00:02:04:01 - 00:02:20:10
They then start going back to work. And of course, you unwind most of the damage. The problem there is that at least is someone trying to track the state of the economy? We won't have clean data. We won't have a good sense for what's really happening absent these distortions until the December data, which guess what comes out in January?
00:02:20:10 - 00:02:42:15
So you are stuck with a blurrier period of time over the remainder of this fall, apart from impossible to say what's going on. And let's acknowledge that there are ways to slice data regionally and to extract out some of the distortions. And so we'll have a sense for what's happening, but it will be a little harder, particularly using some of the classic headline metrics like the numbers of jobs created and that sort of thing.
00:02:42:17 - 00:03:00:17
When you talk about natural disasters over the medium run, this is now a multi-year trajectory. You then need to rebuild damaged property and infrastructure. So there's actually a small boost to the level of activity over that period of time, but it's not really so relevant in the next month or two. We think the impact on inflation should be small.
00:03:00:17 - 00:03:21:17
It's theoretically positive, but it should be small. Monetary policy probably doesn't deviate too much on the basis of this temporary shock.
U.S. election: We'll see what happens with the elections, but I think it's fair to say and indeed, as I'll speak to in a moment, some of the polls and betting markets are saying that the hurricanes perhaps damaged slightly the incumbents in the White House, the Democrats in this context.
00:03:21:17 - 00:03:43:08
There's always some dissatisfaction with the government response after natural disasters. That might be weighing on Harris.
Recession risks: Let's move from that to just recession risks and the state of the economy in general. We're feeling pretty good about things in a U.S. context. We have again downgraded the recession risk from a 30% to a 25% chance.
00:03:43:08 - 00:04:01:04
That's still a higher chance than normal. Normal would be a 10 or 15% chance. But nevertheless, a reduction. Not long ago we had a 40% chance of recession. So a 25% is quite a bit below that. Why are we doing that? Why do we feel a bit better? Some of it is just the economic data has improved.
00:04:01:04 - 00:04:22:10
Economic surprises are no longer negative, which they had been for most of 2024. Payrolls came in up a quarter million jobs. The unemployment rate fell in the U.S. These are all improvements. After a period of some softness in the labor market, the ISM (Institute for Supply Management) services sector index has seen a nice little increase as well. It's broadly been signaling growth for the bulk of the last few years.
00:04:22:10 - 00:04:38:16
But we saw a nice little acceleration, in the September data.
The Fed (Federal Reserve) is here and delivering rate cuts, as it did in September and likely to do another in early November. And so, of course, that helps as well. So we do think the risk of recession has gone down. I would say it's gone down in most markets.
00:04:38:16 - 00:04:58:21
Maybe Germany is the exception where there are some real challenges there. I would still say the risk of recession is probably higher in a lot of countries than that 25% rate in the U.S., but also improving in Germany.
Interest rate cuts: On the subject of the Federal Reserve, well, rate cuts of course were delivered in September. We thought that market expectations were a little bit too bold after that.
00:04:58:21 - 00:05:20:12
So initially the market was saying we're going to get more 50 basis point rate cuts in October and pardon me in November and December and so on. And that was not impossible and that remains not impossible. But we did think it was probably too much. And, indeed, as those stronger payroll numbers have come in, with U.S. CPI (Consumer Price Index) a hair hotter than expected for the month of September as well, we think a 25 basis point rate cut, in fact, a sequence of 25 basis point rate cuts probably makes more sense.
00:05:20:14 - 00:05:38:02
And I'm happy to say the market is now pivoting to reflect that view as well. So, probably not 50 basis point moves. Not unless there's a big negative surprise in the near term on the U.S. election.
00:05:38:02 - 00:05:56:08
I’ve probably already stolen my thunder here. But betting markets have swung pretty sharply recently. And so, Harris had a tidy little lead. At least that was the thinking as recently as a couple of weeks ago. And now the betting markets are saying that Trump is the one with the advantage. There's still a lot of noise. There's still a lot of uncertainty.
00:05:56:08 - 00:06:12:13
This comes down to perhaps tens of thousands of votes in a few swing states. There are still very many scenarios in which either could win. Indeed, neither has more than a 55% or so chance of winning. And so it's still very close indeed. But you have to acknowledge Trump is now the slight favorite as it stands right now.
00:06:12:15 - 00:06:34:19
As in terms of why that's happened. Well, you know, I think the arguments would be that Kamala Harris had a handful of maybe underwhelming media interviews and that may have hurt her slightly. Maybe that hurricane response is also weighing as well, though I've seen people quite rightly argue that the turnout in the regions affected by the hurricane could be a little bit lower as people prioritize getting their lives back in order.
00:06:34:21 - 00:06:55:03
Those are traditionally Republican-leaning regions of the states that were affected. And so perhaps it cuts both ways. But for the moment, maybe that slice is slightly against Harris as well. Just a reminder that our analysis continues to suggest that a Trump win would be at least slightly stock market positive. A Harris win would be perhaps slightly bond market positive.
00:06:55:03 - 00:07:15:12
And from an economic standpoint, we don't have either being enormously stimulative. But we do have short term growth being a little bit faster under Trump versus Harris, medium term growth being a little slower under Trump versus Harris. And so some some conflicting forces at work there.
Chinese economy: On Chinese, stimulus in the Chinese economy. Certainly there are material concerns about the Chinese economy.
00:07:15:12 - 00:07:42:05
That's been the dominant issue in the China context. However, Chinese stimulus has been repeated and significant, ultimately. And there has been a recent new set of initiatives that include rate cuts and associated mortgage rate cuts, a reduction in the minimum down payment for second properties, easier lending standards, and also some lending specifically designed to encourage large Chinese institutions to buy stocks.
00:07:42:07 - 00:08:11:20
And so the Chinese stock market has soared pretty remarkably. Actually, it's since given back some of those gains, but markets are still quite a lot higher than they were before.
We are assuming there is more stimulus to come. China does have the fiscal capacity to do that. Our view is that while China is undeniably diminished, with challenging demographics and frictions with the U.S. and a number of other very real problems that lend China to much less growth than before. We think sub-5% this year and 3 or 4% in subsequent years.
00:08:11:20 - 00:08:28:14
So we're fully on board with this lower China story. We do think some of the pessimism is overblown, and people who think that the economy is secretly shrinking are probably not right in that regard. Our data suggests the economy is still growing and so on. We do think that there's room for more Chinese stimulus. Chinese stocks do look somewhat cheap to us.
00:08:28:14 - 00:08:49:00
While recognizing the risks of scope for a fair amount of volatility there on oil prices. Well, I mean, oil prices have increased on largely, I would say, geopolitical concerns. We've gone from sort of $70 type oil to closer to $80 or at least $75 type oil. And in terms of why that's happened, I think part has just been that oil prices were pretty low.
00:08:49:02 - 00:09:07:09
And, as geopolitical concerns have mounted, we do think that there are scenarios in which oil prices go up somewhat further. And so they're not certain, but just the balance of risks does lend itself toward higher oil as opposed to lower oil. There is very much the risk of further escalation in the Middle East in a way that affects the price of oil.
00:09:07:11 - 00:09:26:19
We think, as an example, that long-term oil prices are more likely to be higher than lower as you know, lower demand is maybe more than offset by lower supply over the coming decades. But we would push back against the idea that oil prices could be radically higher and be stuck at a radically higher level, even if there is an intensification on the geopolitical side.
00:09:26:20 - 00:09:43:11
So the reason we don't think things have to go too far or get stuck there, part of it is just that we've already seen how things played out in a Russian context, which is, Russia, of course, had sanctions applied against it. It initially did lose access to foreign markets to sell its energy. But ultimately that energy found a home.
00:09:43:11 - 00:10:02:09
In Russia's case, China and India bought most of that. And we did not see oil prices elevated for a sustained period of time. They reverted back to where they had been, if Iran were to lose some production capacity or export capacity or even suffer additional sanctions, OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) is sitting on about 5% of global output in spare capacity.
00:10:02:09 - 00:10:20:10
That is enough to more than, at least theoretically, more than offset any decline in Iranian production. OPEC, for that matter, doesn't particularly want high prices. You can think back to the 70s and say maybe they would want a shock of that sort. But these days U.S. shale oil is so nimble, it's a swing producer. It can fill holes and it can just eat OPEC's lunch, if OPEC were to play games of that sort.
00:10:20:15 - 00:10:39:22
Similarly, I think there's a thinking probably among all oil producers that as electric vehicles come in and we are at this potentially inflection point, any kind of period of sustained higher oil prices could well just accelerate the timing of that inflection point to the permanent disadvantage and the permanent destruction of the demand for oil.
00:10:39:22 - 00:10:58:01
And so, again, we think there is a risk oil prices are higher. There is even a scenario in which they go quite a bit higher for a short period of time. We'd be surprised if they got stuck at a higher level.
Canadian economic update: I’ll now finish with Canada. So just a few general Canadian economic updates. I would say more good data than bad, which is nice because it had been the opposite for a while.
Canadian job numbers came in looking pretty good, up 47,000 positions. The unemployment rate actually fell, which is an unfamiliar trend for Canadians, where an unemployment rate has increased by almost two percentage points since late 2022. So that was quite nice. The Business Outlook Survey in Canada was still soft, but did show, I thought, some notable improvements in terms of sales expectations and that kind of thing.
00:11:20:13 - 00:11:41:23
So, suggesting a slight improvement, but really more importantly, not a further deterioration. And then the inflation numbers came in and they were soft. And so Canadian headline inflation has just fallen from 2.0%, which was on target to 1.6%, which is technically below target. That's maybe not a perfect representation of what's happening, given that core inflation is still in the low to mid twos and so on.
00:11:42:01 - 00:12:00:00
But nevertheless, inflation is still falling and looking reasonably tame. Rent costs have been a source of concern for us within Canadian inflation. They're still really high. They're still running 8% year over year. But those did come down actually pretty notably from August to September. So we'll take that as well. That puts the Bank of Canada in a pretty decent position to cut rates.
00:12:00:00 - 00:12:18:21
So Canada does have economic slack. Canadian inflation is looking more normal. Rates are pretty high. It does make sense for the Bank of Canada to continue cutting rates, probably more likely a 50 basis point move than a 25 basis point move at this point in time. But I would say there's a little bit less urgency than there was, given that the economy seems to be tangibly stabilizing right now.
00:12:18:21 - 00:12:34:11
So we would say maybe it's a 50 basis point move in late October. Maybe they then revert back to 25 basis point cuts thereafter, as opposed to continuing to move at a rapid rate beyond that.
Okay, I'll stop there. Thanks for your time. I hope you found this useful and interesting, and I look forward to talking to you again next time.
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