大恐慌！？ その110 米経済はハードランディングへ

このブログでも度々取り上げているNY大Nouriel Roubini教授の以下の記事（※１）は米経済が今後ハードランディングに向かう理由を詳しく解説しており、分かりやすい。

特に住宅市場が更に悪化する理由として以下の５つをあげている。

１．新築住宅建設戸数が需要に対しまだ多すぎる

２．住宅ローン市場での信用収縮が新築住宅の需要を更に下げる

３．数百万の家主が破産し、債権者は差し押さえた家を売りに出す

４．約1兆ドルの金利変動住宅ローンの金利が、今後１２ヶ月で大幅に高い水準にリセットされる

５．リファイナンス出来ない家主が家を叩き売る、投機目的で家を買った人が住宅価格の下落につれて売る

既に３０年ぶりの不況となっている住宅市場であるが、更に落ちるしかない。また、住宅市場の不況が、雇用、個人消費など経済のほかの面にも波及し始めている。経済の悪化と信用収縮のネガティブスパイラルの懸念が高まっている。

FRBによる利下げへの期待も高まっているが、インフレを懸念するFRBの対策が遅すぎand/or小出ししすぎ、のリスクが指摘されている。

※１

○The Coming U.S. Hard Landing（一部抜粋）

http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/213894/

The utterly ugly employment figures for August (a fall in jobs for the first time in four years, downward revisions to previous months’ data, a fall in the labor participation rate, and an even weaker employment picture based on the household survey compared to the establishments survey) confirm what few of us have been predicting since the beginning of 2007: the U.S. is headed towards a hard landing.
 

The probability of a US economic hard landing (either a likely outright recession and/or an almost certain “growth recession”) was already significant even before the severe turmoil and volatility in financial markets during this summer. But the recent financial turmoil - that has manifested itself as a severe liquidity and credit crunch - now makes the likelihood of such a hard landing even greater. There is now a vicious circle where a weakening US economy is making the financial markets’ crunch more severe and where the worsening financial markets and tightening of credit conditions will further weaken the economy via further falls of residential investment and further slowdowns of private consumption and of capital spending by the corporate sector.

The US economic slowdown was already serious since early 2007 and will get worse in the next few quarters for a variety of reasons. A massive housing bubble - where home prices went to stratospheric levels because of a debt-driven asset bubble (a massive rise in mortgage debt of households) - has now turned into the most severe housing recession in the last 30 years and into a house price bust: for the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s home prices are now falling on a year-over-year basis. Home prices will fall much more in the next two years – by at least 15% - because of five factors that will make the huge excess inventory of new and existing homes – already at historic highs – even larger: first production of new home is still excessive as demand for new homes has fallen more than the now lower supply; the credit crunch in mortgage markets will further reduce the demand for new homes; millions of households will default on their mortgages and go into foreclosure and once the creditor banks will repossess these homes they will dump them in the market adding to the excess supply; about $1 trillion of adjustable rate mortgages will be reset – at much higher interest rates – in the next 12 months: the households that cannot refinance them and/or afford the higher interest rates will sell their homes at distressed prices;  and those who bought homes for speculative reasons with little equity will now try to sell their homes as prices are falling. So expect a much faster and deeper fall in home prices for the next two years.
 

A housing recession alone cannot lead to an economy-wide recession as housing is only 5% of GDP. But now the housing slump is spreading to other parts of the economy: the auto sector is in a recession; the manufacturing sector is sharply slowing down; demand for housing related durable goods (furniture, home appliances) is falling. Moreover, US private consumption – that represents over 70% of aggregate demand – is now under pressure. The US consumer is now saving-less, debt-burdened and buffeted by many negative forces. As long as home prices were rising it made sense for US households to use their homes as their ATM machines, borrow against their rising home equity and spend more than their income (negative savings). But now that home prices are falling there is the beginning of a retrenchment of consumption whose growth rate slowed down from a 4% average until the first quarter of 2007 to a weak 1.3% in the second quarter, even before the summer financial market turmoil.
 

There are now many negative factors squeezing US consumers and forcing them to retrench spending: falling home values leading to a negative wealth effect; sharply falling home equity withdrawal preventing households from overspending; a credit crunch in mortgages and consumer debt markets rising debt servicing costs for consumers; still high oil and gasoline prices; the beginning of a serious weakening of the labor market – as signaled by today’s employment report and other data - that will significantly reduce income generation in the months ahead. As long as income generation and job generation was robust, one could dismiss the risks of a hard landing; but the signal from today’s employment report is that the only force that was preventing a hard landing (jobs and income generation) is now starting to falter.  
 

一部略

Indeed, the forthcoming easing of monetary policy by the Fed will not rescue the economy and financial markets from a hard landing as it will be too little too late. The Fed underestimated the severity of the housing recession, its spillovers to other sectors, and the contagion of the sub-prime carnage to other mortgage markets and to the overall financial markets. Fed easing will not work for several reasons: the Fed will cut rate too slowly as it is still worried about inflation and about the moral hazard of perceptions of rescuing reckless investors and lenders; we have a glut of housing, autos and consumer durables and the demand for these goods becomes relatively interest rate insensitive once you have a glut that requires years to work out; serious credit problems and insolvencies cannot be resolved by monetary policy alone; and the liquidity injections by the Fed are being stashed in excess reserves by the banks, not relent to the parts of the financial markets where the liquidity crunch is most severe and worsening. The Fed provided liquidity to banking institutions but it cannot provide direct liquidity to hedge funds, investment banks, other highly leveraged institutions and parts of the credit markets – such as asset backed commercial paper – where the crunch is severe. Thus, the liquidity crunch in most credit markets remains severe, even in the usually most liquid interbank markets.
 

以下略