In first part of this article I referred to the opinion of Martin Feldstein that the risk of recessione negli Usa sono in aumento e non in diminuzione come sembra invece pensare la maggioranza degli investitori.
Ho anche scritto come per Feldstein è il mercato della casa che continua a porre i problemi più gravi.
I consistenti cali dei prezzi dell’ultimo anno, che non hanno precedenti nella storia americana del dopoguerra, stanno facendo lievitare il numero di famiglie alle prese con debiti verso le banche superiori al valore degli immobili ipotecati (una condizione detta di negative equity ).
C’è il rischio che si inasprisca sempre più la spirale perversa tra cali dei prezzi e insolvenze on loans with such an impact on household wealth and the assets of the banks to make it possible - in the words of Feldstein - one of the "most severe and sustained recessions of the last several decades."
To better understand the fears of Feldstein in this second part I would like first to focus on house prices and see what are the prospects of the U.S. market. I shall refer to an excellent article in the weekly 's Economist last week.
We therefore build on the data. Unfortunately, statistics on the U.S. housing market there are several, mostly so selective to become unreliable when used as a measure of the national situation.
As discussed in the Economist, although none of the existing indices is quite satisfactory, the least imperfect is certainly the ' S & P Case-Shiller , whose last update, reported in February (see graph below the rate of annual change in the last twenty years), was made public last April 29.
The S & P Case-Shiller says essentially three things:
a) prices fell in February, on an annual basis, between 12.5% \u200b\u200b (index more wide on a sample of 20 cities) and 13.6% (index of 10 major cities);
b) in recent months the fall in prices has been accelerating;
c) there are signs that has hit rock bottom.
Among the data, you could also mention the future index S & P Case-Shiller, which indicate that the market suffered a further decline in prices of about 20% before reaching the minimum in 2010 .
As the Economist notes, however, these contracts recently created and still very illiquid, which may provide unreliable information.
The fact that the pricing environment remains marked downward, however, there is no doubt. Easily be deduced from the analysis of demand and of ' offer. The
stocks of unsold homes continues to grow and that the Economist there is an oversupply estimated at about 1.1 million housing units, a total of 4.06 million units sold at end of March.
As the manufacturers have drastically reduced their activities, supply is fed by the influx of more and more people properties offered at auction at the conclusion of the procedures foreclosure - rose in April, RealtyTrac second, 4% and 65% in March from a year ago.
A fundamental level, a way to identify the threshold of support to the current fall in prices is to determine what is missing to achieve assessments in line with the historical average, even though experience shows that after a boom in prices tend to exceed the downward before running at the fair value .
Goldman Sachs analysts , reports the Economist, have developed a model that relates house prices to disposable income of families and interest rates in the long term.
Result? The level of equilibrium should be reached only after a fall in prices at the national level, the about 20% from the peak. The process of correction of excesses, according to this yardstick, it would be more or less half of its course.
Another recent study by Morris Davis University of Wisconsin-Madison and Andreas Lehnert and Robert Martin the Federal Reserve, has instead sought to establish what level of balance in the relationship between prices and rents - what is sometimes called the P / E del mercato immobiliare.
La conclusione dello studio è che tra il 1960 e il 1995 il rendimento medio (rapporto affitto/prezzo ) si è mantenuto in America molto stabile, in una forchetta compresa tra il 5% e il 5,5%. Dopodichè si è inabissato, per effetto dell’ascesa dei prezzi, fino a un minimo del 3,5% al picco del boom.
Secondo Michael Feroli , un analista di JP Morgan citato dall’Economist, l’indice S&P Case-Shiller dovrebbe scendere di un altro 10%-15% da qui alla fine del 2009 per riportare i rendimenti in linea con la media di lungo periodo.
Anche in questo caso, il crollo dei prezzi sembra essere, nella migliore delle ipotesi, appena a metà strada.
Effetti sull'economia del crollo del mercato immobiliare
Da qualsiasi parte si analizzi la situazione, la risposta è dunque che il mercato deve ancora scendere molto. Con quali effetti sull’economia?
Per capire meglio i motivi del pessimismo di Friedman vorrei utilizzare un’analisi dei nessi tra mercato immobiliare ed economia americana pubblicata un mese fa da Paul Kasriel, chief economist di Northern Trust.
S’intitola “How housing has affected the economic ecology” e ne raccomando la lettura who has a little 'familiarity with the English language and the macroeconomy. Kasriel known to be clever, simple and essential and his studies on the U.S. economy are among the best and most accessible that I know.
analysis Kasriel try the steps here to report salient.
First, to understand the effects of sboom must not lose our sense of context and perspective. The crisis in the housing market followed the biggest boom in postwar history.
At the peak, the single-family home sales came to represent the 16.3% of GDP compared to a historical average of 8, 4% (see chart below by Northern Trust). The real estate sector can be traced back nearly a third of the jobs created during the growth cycle of the past.
addition, the peculiar characteristics of the U.S. market have meant that, in the presence of steadily rising house prices, households have been able to renegotiate the loans ( refinancing) and to obtain loans banks ( home equity loans), obtaining additional liquidity that - at the peak - it's got to be equal to 6% of disposable income.
(On this also see the clear explanation offered in the box House prices and household consumption in the United States p. Chapter 14 of Economy and Economic Policies of bulletin Bank of Italy in March 2006).
Such liquid extraction of resources from good home (home equity extraction ) added to large net sales of shares that families have put in place towards the corporate sector (up to 7% of disposable income) can to explain why the consumption expenditure has reached the height of the last cycle of expansion between 2005 and 2006 highs to equal 96% of disposable income .
Naturalmente, ora che il boom è diventato crollo, questi potenti fattori di espansione dei consumi e dell’attività economica si sono messi a operare in senso inverso.
La ricchezza immobiliare delle famiglie sta rapidamente diminuendo. C’è meno possibilità di estrarre risorse liquide dal bene casa. E’ più difficile ottenere un mutuo o un prestito garantito dall’immobile. Inoltre, il generale rallentamento dell’economia spinge all’insù il tasso di disoccupazione.
Non stupisce, di conseguenza, che la fiducia dei consumatori sia precipitata ai livelli più bassi dalla recessione del 1980 (vedi grafico sotto, a cura di Northern Trust).
Nor surprisingly, the consumption been in pain. In particular, retail sales began to shrink in real terms, marking the first quarter of an annual decrease of 2.4% (see chart below, by Northern Trust).
In April, as announced a few days ago, the decline continued with a -0.3% in real terms compared to March (the result, in accordance with the "saucy" trend that has taken hold among analysts and market participants in recent weeks, has generally been welcomed).
If the real estate sector continues to bend down and consumption is obvious that the activity in other areas come into difficulties. L 'optimism companies, both large and small, fell to the lowest level since the recession of 1990 while both the capacity utilization that industrial production are diminishing. The investments will be affected.
Crisis in the housing market and banking system
Finally, there is to consider the financial dimension of this real estate cycle of boom followed by crisis.
families have made an appeal to the exasperated debt, came to touch the 52.5% the value of residential property - an unprecedented level. And mortgages have become the first class of debt in the U.S. economy is twice as important of Treasury securities.
The common opinion is that the banks have originated loans but do not have then held in the portfolio, ending instead to distribute widely in the capital markets through securitization transactions .
This "conventional wisdom " Kasriel observes, is just the reality.
Indeed, in the assets of U.S. banks loans and loans secured by real estate - Then look at products without mortgage backed ( mortgage bonds or MBS ) - have grown so large in recent years, from 20% of total credit in 2001 to 30% in 2006. Many
MBS, then, if they have been distributed have also been repurchased at a certain point. So much so that, overall, mortgages and MBS , so all activities linked variously to the property market, have come to represent the 60% of 'active of large U.S. commercial banks, a record as shown in the chart below (by Northern Trust).
"Here lies the problem ," says Kasriel . "The side of the most important class of debt in the U.S. economy is experiencing the most severe price declines since the war."
The result, as we began to see, will massive losses on a wide range of classes of assets, which will reduce the banking system in a state of weakness and thin.
concludes Kasriel: "Even if the Fed will continue to provide low-cost liquidity to the financial system, the banks' demand for delivering the Fed will be weak dato che si troveranno prive del capitale per sostenere il credito al settore privato.”
La conseguenza ultima di questo stato di cose non può che essere duplice:
a) la recessione in corso (“ current recession ”, così si esprime Kasriel e io concordo) sarà più severa di quella del 2001, perché centrata sul settore delle famiglie, che conta per il 75% circa del Pil.
b) la ripresa, quando avrà inizio (per Kasriel non prima della fine di quest’anno), sarà lenta per l’inadeguato sostegno di un sistema bancario sottocapitalizzato: piuttosto che a V, will be U-shaped or even L, which means that rather than a recovery is likely to be a stagnation expected to continue at least through 2009.
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