China’s Economy is Going to Crash

Close attention has been paid to the fragmenting Eurozone, where social benefits funded by debt accumulation are bankrupting the entire aging continent. Less attention has been paid to China, where debt accumulation has financed not social benefits, but massive construction projects.

Financial strength is always ultimately found on the balance sheet of a nation, not the income statement. A nation with high GDP, i.e., strong revenues, may be funding that growth through massive borrowing. As the income statement racks up a string of impressive performances, the balance sheet may be steadily worsening.

Nearly two years ago, in “The China Bubble,” I pointed out numerous examples of asset inflation, primarily in real estate, that had already been going on for over a decade in China. Just like in the United States, these over-valued assets have been used as collateral to fund economic expansion. And just like in the United States, eventually people in China will stop buying over-valued assets and their price plummets. This is happening now in China.

One of the best economics blogs out there is “Global Economic Analysis” by Mike Shedlock. His recent post entitled “Real Estate Crash in China Underway: Foreign Funding Down 80%, Land Sales Down 57%, Starts Down 27%; Expect Chinese GDP to Plunge,” says it all. In his post, Shedlock references a report entitled “China Real Estate Unravels” by Patrick Chovanec, a professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing, China. Chovanic writes:

“Property investment accounts for roughly a quarter of gross Fixed Asset Investment (FAI), and net FAI accounts for over half of China’s GDP growth. As I noted in January, in a back-of-the-envelope thought exercise, if property investment plateaus (growth falls to zero), it could shave as much as 2.6 percentage points off of real GDP growth. If it fell 10% (in real, not nominal terms) it could bring GDP growth down to 5.3%.”

And Shedlock responds:

“Chovanec notes if real estate investment drops by 10%, GDP will come in at 5.3%. What if real estate investment falls by 20% or 25%? Moreover, why shouldn’t it?”

I agree completely. There is no market left for Chinese real estate. They have entire cities they’ve built that are empty. With no more buyers, there will be no more investment. China’s economy ran on construction and exports. Their export market has not only matured, but declined. Now their construction market is collapsing. They are losing their two primary engines of GDP growth. China now joins Europe, desperately confronting an era of prolonged deflation.

There are several take-aways here:

(1) The US Dollar will remain the global transaction currency and will hold its value in spite of a monetary policy that enables massive deficit spending.

(2) The global prices for conventional energy will drop; the price impact of future middle-eastern turmoil will be mitigated by the reality of depressed energy demand.

(3) China will shift her economic priorities to militarization and become more aggressive in the South China Sea.

(4) The United States, while challenged by the economic disasters unfolding in the Eurozone and China, will not necessarily share their fate. For much more on why the U.S. economy can remain dominant despite mounting levels of debt, read “National Debt and Rates of Return.”

(5) While the relatively better financial condition of the U.S. economy buys time, if the U.S. doesn’t resolve its structural deficits and reform its banking system, it will eventually experience the problems already starting in Europe and China. If this occurs, instead of being the locomotive that pulls the world economy out of a prolonged deflationary depression, the U.S. will be the locomotive that drags the entire global economy into the abyss.

(6) One of the biggest economic challenges facing the United States is providing equitable and sustainable retirement security to an aging population. But America’s population, while aging, is demographically sustainable, unlike that of any other developed nation. Here is one way to restructure America’s retirement entitlements: “Merge Social Security and Public Sector Pensions.”

As I wrote in June 2010 in “The China Bubble,”

“The biggest risk of America reemerging economically amid relatively worse economic problems in the rest of the world is that their good fortune will be squandered, as structural reforms to America’s economy are deferred or abandoned in the face of a deceptively positive economic performance. America will still be able to print currency at will, borrowing additional trillions because even as a nation dealing with unprecedented debt, she still has the most diverse and secure economy on earth. Most crucially, America may delay reforming her public sector, using her ability to persist in massive federal deficit spending only to indulge in overpaying public sector bureaucrats – a hideous waste of deficit spending, which is properly used on infrastructure projects and technology initiatives that yield long-term strategic returns on investment.”

California’s Government Worker Pensions Are Bankrupt

As reported today in Capitol Weekly, in a post entitled “CalPERS ignores Brown, delays pension payment” by Ed Mendel, the amount taxpayers will have to fork over to CalPERS next year will rise by $213 million, to a total of $3.7 billion. Governor Brown, quite rightly, believes the full amount of the necessary increase should have been assessed, another $149 million, instead of being “smoothed” over the next twenty years.

But CalPERS – the largest of over 30 major government worker pension funds in California, only manages about a third of the the state and local public sector pensions. And CalPERS is basing their increase on a lowering of their projected rate of return for their invested funds by one quarter of one percent, from 7.75% down to 7.5%.

People may debate endlessly over whether or not government worker pension funds in America, now managing over $4.0 trillion in assets, can actually earn 7.5% per year, every year, for decades on end. We have argued repeatedly that this rate of return is impossible to achieve any longer, because (1) high returns in the past depended on debt accumulation, which poured cash into the economy, which stimulated consumer spending, investing, and asset appreciation – enabling more borrowing – all of which caused investment returns to grow at levels that cannot continue now that borrowing has reached its practical limit, (2) our aging population means more people will be selling their investments to finance their retirements – including the pension funds whose participants themselves are aging and are retiring with higher benefits than previous retirees – and this puts more sellers in the market, lowering asset values and returns on invested assets, and (3) pension funds are much larger as a percent of GDP than they were in previous decades, and they are now too big to consistently beat the market.

This debate will not go away. But it is at least worth examining just how much it will cost Californians if the rates of return on state and local government worker pension funds drops by 1.0%, 2.0%, or 3.0%. The fact is, they might drop by even more than that. Go to a commercial bank and try to buy a U.S. Treasury bill or certificate of deposit that pays 4.75%. Or examine the returns on the major stock exchanges over the past 10+ years. Yields are well under 4.75%, yet CalPERS has lowered their rate of return by only one-quarter of one percent to 7.5?

What are they scared of? Why not pick a risk-free, much lower rate of return?

The table below shows how much the annual pension contribution as a percent of payroll increases when the rate of return drops. Column one shows the contributions required under the original 7.75% long-term rate of return projection, which has just been lowered to 7.5%. Columns two, three and four show the contributions required under lower rates of return, 6.75%, 5.75%, and 4.75%. The rows show just how much these contributions need to be under various pension formulas. These formulas govern most government worker pensions – the percentage noted, “1.25% per year,” for example, means that if a government worker retires after 30 years, their pension will be calculated as follows: 1.25% x 30 x final salary, or in this case, 37.5% of final salary. The amounts selected for these rows are representative of the following pension formulas:

  • 1.25% per year  –  for typical non-safety employees up until around 2000.
  • 1.6% per year  –  the average of non-safety and safety employees up until around 2000.
  • 2.0% per year  –  for typical safety employees up until around 2000; for typical non-safety employees since then.
  • 2.5% per year  –  the average of non-safety and safety employees since around 2000.
  • 3.0% per year  –  for typical safety employees since around 2000.

On the table below, row four of the pension formulas, outlined, shows how lowered rates of return will impact the contributions necessary to fund a 2.5% per year formula. Since 2.5% per year is the blended average that would represent all current state and local government employees in California, the results in this row should be of great interest to taxpayers and public employees alike. As can be seen in this case, the annual pension contribution as a percent of payroll must increase from 16.3% at the rosy rate of return of 7.75% to 21.4% (at 6.75% return), to 28% (at 5.75% return), to 36.6% (at a still impressive 4.75% rate of return).

The table above concludes by taking these pension contributions and applying them to the total payroll of California’s state and local governments, which is (using conservative estimates) 1,500,000 employees times an average annual salary of $70,000 per year (ref. U.S. Census, 2010 CA State Gov. Payroll, and 2010 CA Local Gov. Payroll). As can be seen, if the rate of return for California’s state and local government employee pension funds drops from 7.75% to 6.75%, this will cost taxpayers another $5.4 billion per year. If the return projection drops to 5.75%, it will cost taxpayers another $12.3 billion per year. And if the return projection drops to 4.75% per year, it will cost taxpayers an additional $21.3 billion per year. But wait, because the above analysis still understates the problem.

There’s one more big gotcha.

The first table is entitled “Impact of Lowered Return Projections if we could Retroactively Increase Contributions.” But we can’t do that. Contributions that are in the funds currently were made under the assumption that the 7.75% rate of return would last forever. If we lower that assumption, we still have to fund our pension obligations by investing the money we’ve already got, plus whatever additional monies we can collect from now on. This severely compounds the problem.

The next table, below, calculates how much lowered return projections will cause pension contributions to increase, if half of the contributions are already made. This assumes that in aggregate, the participants in California’s government worker pensions are at mid-career. This is an extremely conservative assumption, because there are millions of government workers who are already retired, whose pension payments are equally dependent on investment returns from the pension funds. This next table therefore understates the impact of lower investment returns on the required contributions to the fund from existing workers.

As can be seen in this more realistic, but still very much a best case scenario, if the rate of return for California’s state and local government employee pension funds drops from 7.75% to 6.75%, this will cost taxpayers another $11.3 billion per year. If the return projection drops to 5.75%, it will cost taxpayers another $24.9 billion per year. And if the return projection drops to a still quite aggressive 4.75% per year, it will cost taxpayers an additional $40.8 billion per year.

This is what the pension funds are up against. These are the scenarios the pension bankers exchange in closed meetings, where the press and even their own PR people don’t attend. Imagine if CalPERS admitted, as they should, that their funds cannot reliably expect to earn more than 4.75% per year. It would mean that – assuming all 10 million of California’s households pay taxes, which obviously is not the case – that every household in the state would have to fork over another $4,000 per year in increased taxes.

Critics of pensions and critics of pension reform alike are invited to verify for themselves the calculations made here. To imply, as CalPERS has, that about another $1.0 billion per year, spread among the 30 California government worker pension funds and “smoothed” over the next 20 years, is all it will take to shore up their solvency, is irresponsible. The additional amount necessary to save California’s government worker pensions is probably closer to $40 billion per year, from now until these pension formulas are reduced.

How Construction Worker Unions Can Save California

The California Labor Federation has a membership of more than 1,200 unions, representing over two million workers. And the first of seven key issues they list on their legislative agenda for 2012 is supporting high speed rail. As they put it, “Building high speed rail will grow our economy and create long-term jobs. An estimated 450,000 jobs in operations, maintenance, ticketing, and services will be needed to keep HSR up and running.”

It is difficult to imagine economic thinking more well intentioned yet fundamentally flawed. What private sector unions want, ideally, is to work cooperatively with government and industry to help create well paying jobs. But high speed rail will incur far more economic costs than economic benefits. Massive construction projects, using public/private financing mechanisms, have to benefit the economy. Otherwise they are examples of private gain – high paying jobs for workers who happen to belong to unions involved in the construction and maintenance of the project – in exchange for socialized loss – higher taxes that lower the disposable income of everyone else.

Policy activists who are critical of unions must understand that there are two crucial debates they are engaged in with unions. The first one is an economic argument – convincing union leadership that encouraging free market competition will lower the cost of living for everyone, and that when this happens all workers benefit. This is a tough sell, despite being entirely accurate. But the second debate, which regards what projects unions should be putting at the top of their legislative agenda, is much easier, because all projects create jobs.

During the great depression, massive infrastructure projects were completed that delivered millions of jobs, but they also delivered amenities to society at large that yielded long-term economic dividends. Hydroelectric dams increased the availability of water for irrigation and the supply of electricity. Rural electrification delivered cheap and clean power to homes and businesses across the country. New roads and bridges resulted in cheaper and faster movement of people and goods. From new school buildings to new civic stadiums, the public/private projects of the 1930′s helped make affordable education and entertainment more accessible to millions. These infrastructure investments put millions of people to work, but they also fundamentally transformed America’s economy, enabling everyone less expensive access to water, power, transportation, education and entertainment.

There is no possibility whatsoever that high-speed rail can compete in California with existing air travel services. It will lose money forever.

The legislative agenda of unions in California should indeed prioritize public/private partnerships to create high-paying jobs, but they should promote projects that will lower the cost of living in California. This is the win-win formula that results in accelerated economic growth and a higher standard of living for all workers, in addition to delivering construction jobs today. Here are examples of such projects – and none of these would cost anywhere near the $100 billion that is the new minimum estimate for high-speed rail:

(1) Build desalination plants off the Southern California coast:
Desalination technology has advanced to the point where it is now possible to desalinate a cubic meter of seawater using less than 2.0 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Put another way, the energy necessary to desalinate seawater is now less than the energy currently required to pump an equivalent unit of seawater over the mountains from the California aqueduct into the Los Angeles basin. Because the California current is one of the biggest ocean currents in the world, the brine that would be discharged as several gigatons of fresh water were recovered each year from seawater would have an insignificant environmental impact. The brine could be discharged through pipes that would run atop the seabed with the outfall 10+ miles offshore where the California current would disperse it immediately. Desalination is a key element towards delivering cheap water again in California, and like nuclear power, claims that desalination is prohibitively expensive are based more on the cost to overcome regulatory hurdles and lawsuits, not the actual construction costs, and certainly not the operating costs.

(2) Develop new surface storage and aquifer storage for storm runoff:
California’s system of reservoirs provide ample fresh water to agriculture, industry and residential/commercial users in years with normal rainfall, but inevitably there are cycles of drought when the existing water storage infrastructure is inadequate. It is probably possible to add another 5 million acre feet of storage without resorting to high dams by identifying areas within the Central Valley where runoff can be collected in great bulk and kept there until spring irrigation draw-downs begin, or systematically transferred to underground aquifers. The capacity of underground aquifers to store water in California is still poorly understood, but California’s water commission estimates there could be 10 million acre feet or more of underground water storage capacity in California. There is plenty of runoff, even in drought years, that isn’t being harvested. To allow California’s agricultural industry access to cheap, abundant water (agriculture consumes well over 80% of the fresh water diverted in California), better storage of storm runoff is essential.

(3) Widen and upgrade interstate freeways:
Along with interstate freeway upgrades, widen and upgrade all major freeways, highways and boulevards in California. Widen and retrofit bridges and tunnels. California needs smart lanes on upgraded roads, not the “bullet train.” As energy becomes abundant and cheap – and technology guarantees this will occur – the most convenient personal transportation appliance ever conceived, the automobile, will become even more indispensable. Cars of the future will be not only clean operating and fuel efficient, but will go faster than ever and be capable of operating on autopilot. To participate in this revolution in transportation, Californians need to upgrade their roads, not attempt to discourage people from using them by neglecting their maintenance, upgrades, and expansion.

(4) Upgrade existing rail corridors:
It is not necessary to develop bullet trains for passenger transportation in a state that will never have more than 50 million people living along an 800 mile corridor. But fast intercity rail, using existing track that is upgraded to tolerate speeds of 120 MPH is a viable proposition, particularly if these upgraded rail lines are also still utilized for faster freight transportation, which will always be more efficient via rail. Diverting public funds into bullet trains is folly, when immediate returns would accrue to investments in better roads and better existing rail.

(5) Streamline permitting process to allow more oil and gas drilling, and more mines and quarries:
California has abundant energy and mineral resources, but nothing can be developed without years of permit applications and legal battles. As a result, basic raw materials have to be imported at far greater cost than necessary. Making development of mineral resources in California more expensive than virtually anywhere else on earth robs Californians of jobs, and constitutes a drain on every facet of California’s economy that relies on these resources.

(6) Build nuclear power plants:
The latest generation of nuclear power technologies are safer than ever, and there is an abundant supply of nuclear fuel within North America. Adding a few nuclear power stations in California would have a dramatic impact on the price of electricity. Claims that nuclear power is more expensive than alternative energy are based more on the cost to overcome regulatory hurdles and lawsuits, not the actual construction costs, and certainly not the fuel costs. Nuclear power development is a key element towards delivering cheap energy again in California.

(7) Build an LNG terminal off the California coast:
Along with new North American sources of natural gas from shale, there is abundant natural gas around the world, and a global market exists for liquified natural gas that is transported by tanker. A few years ago an LNG terminal was proposed to be built fourteen miles off the coast in Ventura County, but was nixed by California’s legislature. By receiving LNG tankers several miles offshore, and piping in the less hazardous gaseous fuel, this terminal would not pose any threat, however remote, to onshore communities, and would allow California to further diversify their sources of this abundant and clean fossil fuel.

By pushing for high-speed rail which will never come close to ever operating at a profit, the current agenda of California’s union leadership is to create more jobs that are essentially parasitic. They will impose new costs to society to benefit a relatively small number of workers, but make everyone else poorer. It doesn’t have to be this way.

California’s union leadership should recognize that by successfully pushing for infrastructure projects that pay for themselves, they can not only create new jobs, but foster long-term economic growth. This, in turn, will enable perpetual job creation. But if they do this, they would have to take on the powerful environmentalist lobby, for whom high-speed rail is virtually the only project they seem to favor.

Union leadership should also recognize that as long as they are unwilling to take on the environmentalists, and push for projects that lower the costs for water, power, transportation – the basic necessities for all consumers – they are doing the bidding of the corporate special interests. These quasi-monopolies benefit from environmentalism run amok, because it means they avoid competition as long as new projects remain on the drawing board. It means they can charge exorbitant prices for commodities that ought to get cheaper every year.

For private sector unions – who value jobs in construction – to remain relevant and forge new partnerships, they will have to divorce themselves from the environmentalist lobby, which has become extreme, and from the public sector union agenda, which prefers to allocate resources to inflated pay and pensions for government workers over investing taxpayer’s money in public/private infrastructure projects.

Related Posts:

Is Union Reform Partisan?, March 30, 2011

Unions and the American Worker, March 25, 2011

Redefining Environmentalism, March 4, 2011

State Politics and Right-to-Work, January 22, 2011

How to Revive California’s Economy, January 18, 2011

California’s Green Godfathers, January 4, 2011

Investigating Climate Alarmism, November 28, 2010

Bullet Train Boondoggles, November 10, 2010

How Unions Can Save America, September 30, 2010

An Environmentalist Agenda for Earth Day, April 22, 2010

Implementing California’s Global Warming Act, April 13, 2010

The Footprints of Rail Traffic, June 23, 2009