Category Archives: markets

Economic Improvement?

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Our GDP grew at 3.5% last quarter compared to the prior year’s 3rd quarter, against economists’ expectations of a 3.0% growth rate. That’s good, right?

Why did it grow?

Part of the growth came from trade: imports fell sharply. Net trade is a definitional component of our GDP, and net trade consists of Exports less Imports. A reduction in imports, then, by definition elevates GDP.

This particular reduction, though, reflects a reduction in buying goods and services from overseas, which is entirely consistent with another trend: Americans aren’t buying stuff at any high rate, still.

In the 22 quarters since early 2008, real personal-consumption expenditure, which accounts for about 70% of US GDP, has grown at an average annual rate of just 1.1%, easily the weakest period of consumer demand in the post-World War II era.

[Note that the larger subject of the cite’s linked-to Elizabeth MacDonald article concerns our economy’s bailout impeded recovery.]

A larger part of the fall-off in imports, though, is the drop in oil imports. This also reflects a couple of factors: oil imports (imports generally) are measured in dollar prices, and the price of oil is down quite a bit from increased supply. The reason oil imports are down is due partly because we’re bringing smaller volumes of the stuff, but also because we’re spending less on what we do bring in. These two factors—reduced buying generally and the reduced price of oil—greatly reduce the impact of reduced imports generally on our economy. Imports are down because personal consumption is down and because it costs less to buy what we do import. These aren’t reflective of a sound economy.

The other side of that increased supply, though, is increased domestic production of oil (and of natural gas). Lower prices that result from that, both globally and domestically, are good for our economy, but the impact on the global price of oil—those import costs—really has little to do with hard goods being imported, or not.

There’s another factor in that apparently sound quarterly GDP growth rate: government spending in the form of defense spending. Government spending is another definitional component of our GDP, so whenever government spending increases, so does our GDP, regardless of any impact on our actual economy—the private sector, where Americans live and operate. I won’t go into how government spending crowds out private spending; that’s well covered in earlier articles of mine and in articles written by far sharper individuals than me.

It’s the particular government spending, defense spending, that’s of interest in this latest GDP growth number. Defense spending grew at its fastest rate in five years. There are sound reasons for that growth, but defense spending is highly volatile, as heavily influenced as it is by, not just big ticket items, but by huge ticket items, also. These huge ticket items include Navy and Air Force spending for (enormously expensive) ships and aircraft. Next quarter’s spending, next year’s spending, could easily be wildly different from the just concluded quarter’s.

Other factors in last quarter’s GDP growth rate are less encouraging—and they reflect conditions in our actual economy.

Growth in business investment—R&D, capital improvement, plant construction, and so on—slowed and fell well short of expectations. Business investment is a reflection of business owners’ expectation of future economic conditions; they’re unwilling to spend money today if the demand for their goods won’t be there tomorrow. Lack of such investment also means an anticipation of business income being unavailable for pay raises for existing jobs or for hiring for new jobs.

Also, consumer spending decelerated to a 1.8% rate. That’s us not spending (and not buying foreign goods).

That GDP number turns out not to be all it’s been cracked up to be.

Interstate Commerce and Chicken Eggs

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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a California law that requires all eggs sold in the Golden State to come from hens housed in roomier cages.

State Attorneys General from Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Alabama had sued to block implementation of the law on the grounds that it unconstitutionally interfered with interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause.

They said farmers would have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars overhauling farms to ensure they would have access to the California market….

US District Judge Kimberly Mueller of the Eastern District of California disagreed.

The only citizens who may have to spend $120 million to comply with California’s legislation are the egg farmers who intend to participate in California’s egg market[.]

Intend to participate. Not required to participate. That raises a question in my pea brain: which will cost those farmers more, modifying their enclosures or not selling their eggs in California?

Obamacare and Health Care

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As Dr Scott Atlas, of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, in a recent The Wall Street Journal op-ed noted,

  • Private company medical innovation R&D spending in the US the last three years averaged 2.1%, down from an average of 6% over the previous fifteen
  • Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, India, and the EU had greater R&D spending growth in the same period
  • The PRC had a growth rate of 22%

Certainly, those other polities, the EU excepted, were starting from a much smaller base, and so their growth rates will tend to be exaggerated. Certainly, too, our own historically weak economy is exacerbating the situation.

All that notwithstanding, though, this is a trend that is allowed to continue at the peril of our leadership in things medical. Obamacare, with its removal of the insurance aspect of health plans, actively hurts this. What plan can pay for the latest and best drugs or devices, and so drive innovation—or even those drugs or devices that are merely near the cutting edge, or that are middle tier—when those plans aren’t allowed to recoup their costs, except at generalized taxpayer expense?

There’s one aspect, though, that is a direct assault on medical innovation, and that’s Obamacare’s medical-device excise tax. This is a tax the takes 2.3% off the top—that is, before expenses and profit—of all medical device sales. This includes devices from heart pace makers to dialysis units to bandages sold in bulk to hospitals.

2.3% is no big deal?

  • Johnson & Johnson’s medical device and diagnostic sales were down 1.5% in the US, versus up 1.8% internationally, in the first half of 2014
  • General Electric reported that the US healthcare sales shrank by 2% in the second quarter, versus up 2% in Europe
  • Medtronic’s US sales for the 2014 fiscal year were up 1.7%, versus 5.9% internationally
  • Baxter reported US sales of medical products were down 15% for the quarter ended June 2014, versus up 8% globally
  • Fresenius’ US sales of dialysis products were down 1.2% in the first half of 2014, versus up 0.6% internationally

And (via the first link above)

Boston Scientific, Stryker, and Cook Medical have announced job cuts and plans to open new centers for R&D, manufacturing, and clinical trials overseas.

And so on.

Many attempts have been made to repeal this pernicious tax, the latest this past summer. The Democrat-controlled Senate refused to consider it. Again.

In Which another Federal Judge Gets it Right

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Recall Halbig v Sebelius, the case wherein plaintiffs objected to subsidies being paid to Obamacare plan purchasers when the those plans were bought through ObamaMart, the Federally run health plan exchange, instead of through State-run health plan exchanges. The text of the Obamacare law allows the latter and bars the former. The DC Circuit agreed with plaintiffs and struck down the subsidies. (The current status of that ruling is that it’s been stayed pending review of Halbig by the DC Circuit sitting en banc.)

US District Judge Ronald White, of the Eastern District of Oklahoma, has ruled on a similar case that came up in his district, a part of the 10th Circuit. I won’t go into the specifics of Pruitt v Burwell, White’s case; the cases are very similar, and the point I want to make here is slightly different, anyway. I will note that plaintiff Pruitt is Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, and defendant Burwell is Sylvia Mathews Burwell, HHS Secretary (sitting in for Kathleen Sebelius under an arcane Federal rule that allows such things). I will note further that Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew also was a defendant in this case, and leave things there.

White ruled for the plaintiff, which means he also held that the subsidies paid to Obamacare plan purchasers who bought them through ObamaMart are illegal.

Here’s where things get interesting.

In his conclusion, White wrote [citations omitted, emphasis mine]

Other judges in similar litigation have cast the plaintiffs’ argument in apocalyptic language. The first sentence of Judge Edwards’ dissent in Halbig is as follows: “This case is about Appellants’ not-so-veiled attempt to gut the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (‘ACA’).” Concurring in King, Judge Davis states that “[appellants’ approach would effectively destroy the statute….” Further, “[w]hat [appellants] may not do is rely on our help to deny to millions of Americans desperately-needed health insurance….”

And

Of course, a proper legal decision is not a matter of the court “helping” one side or the other. A lawsuit challenging a federal regulation is a commonplace occurrence in this country, not an affront to judicial dignity. A higher-profile case results in greater scrutiny of the decision, which is understandable and appropriate. “[H]igh as those stakes are, the principle of legislative supremacy that guides us is higher still…. This limited role serves democratic interests by ensuring that policy is made by elected, politically accountable representatives, not by appointed life-tenured judges.”

And

This is a case of statutory interpretation. “The text is what it is, no matter which side benefits.” Such a case (even if affirmed on the inevitable appeal) does not “gut” or “destroy” anything. On the contrary, the court is upholding the Act as written. Congress is free to amend the ACA to provide for tax credits in both state and federal exchanges, if that is the legislative will. … “But in the last analysis, these always-fascinating policy discussions are beside the point. The role of this Court is to apply the statute as it is written – even if we think some other approach might ‘accor[d] with good policy.’“

Finally, quoting from a ruling by his own 10th Circuit appellate court,

In reviewing statutes, courts do not assume the language is imprecise…. Rather, we assume that in drafting legislation, Congress says what it means.

And that’s the deal. A law says what Congress—the People’s directly elected representatives—says it says. A judge, or any appellate court at any level of our judicial hierarchy, can only apply that law to the case before him. Most especially, he cannot rewrite the law or “creatively interpret” it into something more agreeable to his personal philosophy.

Oh, and just to saucer and blow the thing, White formally ruled pretty clearly:

The court holds that the IRS Rule [allowing those subsidies] is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law, pursuant to 5 USC §706(2)(A), in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right, pursuant to 5 USC §706(2)(C), or otherwise is an invalid implementation of the ACA….

Judge White’s ruling can be seen here.

 

h/t Jonathan Keim of the National Review Online