Economy

Biden Will Need to Get Creative to Save the Economy – BNN

Published

4 years ago

November 8, 2020

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Joe Biden has been elected to be the next President of the United States. Now he’ll have to get creative.

When the President-elect takes office, he’ll confront the country’s two most acute challenges: an ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the economic damage it’s wrought. But he’ll have an uphill battle to enact the sort of bold policy agenda that many supporters were hoping for.

Barring a January surprise in Georgia’s runoff election, Republicans are likely to retain control of the Senate, denying Biden the unified control of government that his predecessors enjoyed when they came into office. With traditional relief and stimulus measures limited by opposition party intransigence, Biden might still be able to pass policies designed to resuscitate the stricken service sector directly.

The U.S. economy has bounced rapidly back since April, but only partially. Employment has only recovered about halfway to where it was before Covid-19 struck, giving it the shape of a reverse square-root sign:

Lower-wage employees, who tend to work at the local services businesses most deeply impacted by the virus, are suffering more.

The economy is being afflicted by two simultaneous maladies. The first is continued fear of the virus, now in the middle of a devastating third wave. Fear, more than lockdowns, has kept Americans shut inside their homes, reluctant to take the risk of going out to shop or eat. That in turn gives rise to the second problem of decreased demand, which filters through the entire economy.

Fear of the virus will eventually be reduced by vaccines, which may become available in early 2021. A national program of testing and contact tracing — which President Donald Trump long resisted — would also help speed Covid-19 on its way, and should be a priority for the incoming administration. But even when the virus is gone, the economy is likely to remain depressed for awhile, as the overhang of unemployment works its way out of the system.

Bold relief measures, of the type that sustained Americans through the pandemic’s dark early days, probably won’t be forthcoming given the GOP Senate’s inevitable turn towards austerity. The same is true of traditional fiscal stimulus, such as a burst of infrastructure spending, that might help boost demand back to normal levels. But there might be a chance for more targeted measures to help the sectors of the economy that Covid-19 has hurt the most — local services.

Restaurants, shops, and other establishments that cater in person to customers have gone bust in large numbers. After the threat of the virus has passed, the U.S. government might try to resuscitate local economies by subsidizing new shops to fill the empty storefronts that now dot America’s urban landscape. Some of these new establishments would be run by the same owners whose businesses went under during the pandemic, while others would be run by enterprising newcomers. But all would be able to draw on the local pool of unemployed, most of whom were working in these same types of businesses in 2019.

Subsidizing new local businesses would accomplish several goals at once. It would put people back to work at jobs they know how to do, and start pumping demand through the ecosystems of local economies. It would help prevent cities’ commercial retail space from being riddled with unsightly boarded-up vacancies — a blight that hurts viable businesses next door. And it would help sustain and preserve the small business class.

This last aspect might make local business formation subsidies attractive to Republicans in the Senate; small businesspeople are a reliable Republican constituency. Additionally, this policy would be highly targeted; the subsidies could last only until a town’s existing commercial vacancies had been mostly filled, limiting the cost of the program and avoiding the appearance of handing out money at random.

Strict free-market adherents might worry that this plan would delay or prevent needed transformation in the U.S.’s industrial mix. The pandemic has shifted demand from local services to e-commerce; people are watching Netflix instead of going to movie theaters, and ordering things off of Amazon instead of buying them in stores. Some will question whether reversing that shift should be an economic priority.

But the benefit of quickly and cheaply resuscitating local U.S. economies far outweighs the danger of slightly delaying the evolution to a more online future. In fact, local business formation subsidies will simply accelerate a move that’s already in place; new business filings have been above trend since August, as entrepreneurs take advantage of cheap rents and labor. The local economy is restoring itself already — it could just use a push to get the job done faster.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

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Economy

Liberals announce expansion to mortgage eligibility, draft rights for renters, buyers

Published

5 hours ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says the government is making some changes to mortgage rules to help more Canadians to purchase their first home.

She says the changes will come into force in December and better reflect the housing market.

The price cap for insured mortgages will be boosted for the first time since 2012, moving to $1.5 million from $1 million, to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.

The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.

On Aug. 1 eligibility for the 30-year amortization was changed to include first-time buyers purchasing a newly-built home.

Justice Minister Arif Virani is also releasing drafts for a bill of rights for renters as well as one for homebuyers, both of which the government promised five months ago.

Virani says the government intends to work with provinces to prevent practices like renovictions, where landowners evict tenants and make minimal renovations and then seek higher rents.

The government touts today’s announced measures as the “boldest mortgage reforms in decades,” and it comes after a year of criticism over high housing costs.

The Liberals have been slumping in the polls for months, including among younger adults who say not being able to afford a house is one of their key concerns.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

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Economy

Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales up 1.4% in July at $71B

Published

5 hours ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales rose 1.4 per cent to $71 billion in July, helped by higher sales in the petroleum and coal and chemical product subsectors.

The increase followed a 1.7 per cent decrease in June.

The agency says sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector gained 6.7 per cent to total $8.6 billion in July as most refineries sold more, helped by higher prices and demand.

Chemical product sales rose 5.3 per cent to $5.6 billion in July, boosted by increased sales of pharmaceutical and medicine products.

Sales of wood products fell 4.8 per cent for the month to $2.9 billion, the lowest level since May 2023.

In constant dollar terms, overall manufacturing sales rose 0.9 per cent in July.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

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Economy

S&P/TSX gains almost 100 points, U.S. markets also higher ahead of rate decision

Published

3 days ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

TORONTO – Strength in the base metal and technology sectors helped Canada’s main stock index gain almost 100 points on Friday, while U.S. stock markets climbed to their best week of the year.

“It’s been almost a complete opposite or retracement of what we saw last week,” said Philip Petursson, chief investment strategist at IG Wealth Management.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 297.01 points at 41,393.78. The S&P 500 index was up 30.26 points at 5,626.02, while the Nasdaq composite was up 114.30 points at 17,683.98.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 93.51 points at 23,568.65.

While last week saw a “healthy” pullback on weaker economic data, this week investors appeared to be buying the dip and hoping the central bank “comes to the rescue,” said Petursson.

Next week, the U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut its key interest rate for the first time in several years after it significantly hiked it to fight inflation.

But the magnitude of that first cut has been the subject of debate, and the market appears split on whether the cut will be a quarter of a percentage point or a larger half-point reduction.

Petursson thinks it’s clear the smaller cut is coming. Economic data recently hasn’t been great, but it hasn’t been that bad either, he said — and inflation may have come down significantly, but it’s not defeated just yet.

“I think they’re going to be very steady,” he said, with one small cut at each of their three decisions scheduled for the rest of 2024, and more into 2025.

“I don’t think there’s a sense of urgency on the part of the Fed that they have to do something immediately.

A larger cut could also send the wrong message to the markets, added Petursson: that the Fed made a mistake in waiting this long to cut, or that it’s seeing concerning signs in the economy.

It would also be “counter to what they’ve signaled,” he said.

More important than the cut — other than the new tone it sets — will be what Fed chair Jerome Powell has to say, according to Petursson.

“That’s going to be more important than the size of the cut itself,” he said.

In Canada, where the central bank has already cut three times, Petursson expects two more before the year is through.

“Here, the labour situation is worse than what we see in the United States,” he said.

The Canadian dollar traded for 73.61 cents US compared with 73.58 cents US on Thursday.

The October crude oil contract was down 32 cents at US$68.65 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was down five cents at US$2.31 per mmBTU.

The December gold contract was up US$30.10 at US$2,610.70 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents US$4.24 a pound.

— With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)

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