Tape 214 - GNP figures; price outlook; the economic summit; third world debts
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Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
David | Hello, this is David Francis, | 0:02 |
financial editor of the Christian Science Monitor. | 0:03 | |
I'd like to welcome you once more on behalf | 0:06 | |
of Instructional Dynamic Incorporated, | 0:08 | |
to a visit with MIT's Nobel Prize winning | 0:11 | |
economist, Paul Samuelson. | 0:13 | |
The fourth quarter gross national product | 0:16 | |
figures are just out. | 0:18 | |
What does this mean, Dr. Samuelson, | 0:20 | |
for the economy, and the man who has just | 0:21 | |
become the 39th President? | 0:23 | |
Paul | Well, the fourth quarter numbers | 0:26 |
were a little on the disappointing side. | 0:29 | |
We grew only at an annual rate of 3% per anam | 0:33 | |
in the fourth quarter. | 0:37 | |
Which means the 1976, according to these estimates | 0:39 | |
definitely ended up on a softness | 0:44 | |
tack. | 0:50 | |
Moreover, the rate of inflation, which was | 0:51 | |
announced, the overall GMP price deflator, | 0:54 | |
rose as I remember it by over 6% in the quarter. | 0:58 | |
So it's a swan song for President Ford, | 1:03 | |
which makes him look not very good, | 1:09 | |
and it gives his successor, President Carter, | 1:12 | |
now our President as you and I are talking, | 1:19 | |
David, gives him an easy act to follow. | 1:22 | |
Let me say that I waws surprised by how weak | 1:28 | |
the fourth quarter numbers were, | 1:30 | |
and my guess is that when they come to revise | 1:32 | |
those statistics, they will revise them upward. | 1:37 | |
You realize that the first estimates we have for | 1:42 | |
any quarter are based primarily on the first | 1:45 | |
two months of the quarter. | 1:47 | |
That would mean on October and November, | 1:49 | |
and the greater strength of the quarter was | 1:51 | |
in November and December, rather than in | 1:54 | |
October and November, so I would make a small | 1:56 | |
bet that they will revise upward. | 2:01 | |
To show that this was a weak pattern, | 2:03 | |
let me merely mention that | 2:06 | |
Data Resources Incorporated, which tries to be very | 2:08 | |
much up to date, which has just issued its very | 2:11 | |
interesting January 1977 data resources review, | 2:20 | |
that had estimated 4.1% using all the | 2:26 | |
preliminary straws for the fourth quarter. | 2:31 | |
Well we're talking about a difference of 3% to 4.1%, | 2:33 | |
that's a 1.1% difference. | 2:38 | |
And I rather suspect that DRI will turn out to be | 2:42 | |
near the truth in the end, because DRI has has | 2:46 | |
a peek at the December numbers, | 2:49 | |
and I guess the Department of Commerce doesn't | 2:52 | |
dare go by peeks, it has to have good solid | 2:54 | |
looks before it will enter them in. | 2:57 | |
One qualification in caveat. | 3:01 | |
According to John Kendrick, the spokesman | 3:06 | |
for the Department of Commerce, the reason that | 3:09 | |
the quarter was so weak is because investment | 3:11 | |
in inventories was very very low. | 3:14 | |
It had fallen off. | 3:18 | |
Corporations so to speak, | 3:23 | |
not using up their inventories faster than | 3:25 | |
they were replacing them. | 3:28 | |
That would be a real fall off indeed, | 3:30 | |
you'd have be in a deep recession for that to | 3:31 | |
be the case, but inventories only grew at about | 3:34 | |
eight or nine billion dollars instead of | 3:36 | |
the more normal growth figure for this | 3:39 | |
stage of the recovery of perhaps 12 billion | 3:43 | |
dollars annual rate. | 3:48 | |
As far as strength for the near future | 3:50 | |
is concerned, that's like money in the bank. | 3:52 | |
If you've used up the inventories, they have to be | 3:55 | |
all the more replaced, replenished, restocked, | 3:58 | |
and so I would say that the weakness of the fourth | 4:04 | |
quarter, with the strength in final demand, | 4:08 | |
demand independent of inventories, | 4:11 | |
suggests that they parting word of Allen Greenspan, | 4:13 | |
Chairman of the Outgoing Counsel of Economic | 4:18 | |
Advisors, may turn out to be near the truth. | 4:21 | |
He said he thought that in the first quarter | 4:24 | |
of the year, we would grow almost twice as much. | 4:26 | |
About twice as much as the fourth quarter numbers, | 4:29 | |
which means a 6% rate of a real growth. | 4:31 | |
Well if we do that, that'll be | 4:34 | |
greater than DRI's computer thinks, | 4:36 | |
which only looks for 4.7%, and I think | 4:40 | |
that Mr. Greenspan may be overdoing it a bit, | 4:43 | |
but still the Department of Commerce has been | 4:47 | |
under doing it a bit, I think in it's first estimate. | 4:50 | |
David | I see that the final sales in that fourth | 4:53 |
quarter were the biggest of any quarter. | 4:56 | |
They were 4.8%, which is the biggest of any | 4:58 | |
quarter in 1976. | 5:00 | |
Paul | Yes, slightly the biggest. | 5:01 |
In fact, I think that means that final sales were | 5:03 | |
on an upbeat in each of the four quarters | 5:06 | |
of 1976, from something like a little bit | 5:09 | |
below 4% to 4% to a little bit above 4%, to | 5:15 | |
almost 5% in the fourth quarter. | 5:18 | |
And that final sales number is an important | 5:21 | |
number as far as predicting the sustainability | 5:25 | |
of the recovery, as concerned. | 5:29 | |
David | Some economists are now saying that | 5:35 |
the Carter Program provides too much stimulus | 5:37 | |
to the economy. | 5:41 | |
Among them are Sam Nacagama of Sitter Peabody, | 5:42 | |
a Gilbert Hebner of Philadelphia National Bank. | 5:45 | |
What do you think? | 5:49 | |
Paul | Well I'm not acquainted with the Hebner | 5:50 |
method of forecasting and the results of its | 5:54 | |
forecasting, so I should not comment on it. | 5:57 | |
We set an order about the Nacagama analysis | 6:00 | |
last time, and I don't think we should dwell on | 6:06 | |
any one persons analysis on newwly. | 6:08 | |
All that I will say in direct response to your | 6:12 | |
question to me, is that the fourth quarter | 6:16 | |
initial number was a good deal weaker than | 6:21 | |
the reader of Nacagama would have thought | 6:24 | |
because he was speaking of annual rates of | 6:26 | |
growth of the production index, and a real | 6:30 | |
output in November and December | 6:32 | |
of really quite colossal rates, and if for two | 6:38 | |
out of three of the months that had happened, | 6:41 | |
you wouldn't get a number anything like 3%. | 6:45 | |
I think that this is germane for me to | 6:49 | |
introduce. | 6:52 | |
What would a monitorist model, one that has | 6:55 | |
met some test of experience, suggest because | 6:59 | |
just as it's a good idea to diversify your | 7:07 | |
holdings of securities, if your an eclectic | 7:09 | |
you want to diversify your holding | 7:12 | |
of economic theories. | 7:14 | |
And so why just take the forecast from a post | 7:16 | |
cage and GMP model, like the DRI model? | 7:23 | |
Why not see what the regression relations | 7:26 | |
worked out by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis | 7:32 | |
would tell you? | 7:35 | |
And fortunately in this January 1977 | 7:41 | |
Data Resources Review, there is a three or four | 7:44 | |
page article by Chris Kelley, giving monitorist | 7:49 | |
model forecast for 1977 and 1978. | 7:53 | |
And I would have thought before I read this | 7:57 | |
material, that the monitorist model of the | 8:01 | |
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis type | 8:06 | |
would give result probably in more agreement | 8:08 | |
with the Nacagama. | 8:11 | |
There's a lot of strength in the economy. | 8:13 | |
It turns out not to be the case. | 8:15 | |
If you take seriously the regression equations | 8:18 | |
which were worked out by Dr. Anderson and other | 8:22 | |
colleagues at the Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis | 8:28 | |
a few years ago, which predicts how nominal GMP | 8:30 | |
will behave, from distributed lag on the rates | 8:35 | |
of growth on the money supply, and which also | 8:44 | |
breaks down as the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank | 8:46 | |
used to do, the increase in nominal GMP between | 8:49 | |
is real component, real growth of GMP, | 8:54 | |
and the inflation component, the change in | 8:57 | |
overall prices. | 9:00 | |
See, one of the nice things about objective | 9:03 | |
science is it doesn't belong to any one person. | 9:06 | |
It's something which is reproducible. | 9:10 | |
If I do something in my laboratory, and show that | 9:11 | |
let say caviar will cure skin cancer, and nobody | 9:16 | |
else can replicate that experiment, | 9:21 | |
that's an art or a swindle, and doesn't consist | 9:25 | |
of objective, replicable science. | 9:29 | |
The regression equations of the Federal Reserve | 9:34 | |
Bank of St. Louis, they belong to the ages. | 9:38 | |
They don't belong to Missouri, they don't belong | 9:41 | |
to one school of thought. | 9:44 | |
Any one of us can apply them, | 9:45 | |
any one of us can re-estimate the coefficients | 9:47 | |
using the most recent data. | 9:49 | |
And so lets see what it is that they show. | 9:53 | |
What Skelley has done, has been to feed in a | 10:01 | |
2% rate of growth of the M1 money supply, | 10:06 | |
for all of 1977 and 1978, or 4%, or a 6%, | 10:10 | |
or a 10%, going way beyond what we think | 10:16 | |
Dr. Arthur Burns and his colleagues will be willing | 10:21 | |
to give the economy. | 10:25 | |
And to see what happens to the rate of price | 10:27 | |
inflation, what happens to interest rates, | 10:32 | |
and what happens to real GMP growth. | 10:34 | |
And it's very surprising. | 10:40 | |
At least it's surprised me, because if we stay | 10:42 | |
with the guidelines even on the high side, | 10:48 | |
six to eight percent, it turns out that the rate | 10:52 | |
of real growth in 77' will only be somewhere | 10:55 | |
between 3.7% and 4.7%, and that actually falls in 78' | 11:02 | |
to somewhere between 3.7% and 5.2%. | 11:12 | |
In order to get rates of real growth in the | 11:20 | |
economy, we should all live up to what | 11:23 | |
Dr. Burns and the President-Elect talked about as | 11:27 | |
a desirable, say in the four quarters of 77', | 11:30 | |
the next couple quarters, something like 6% | 11:35 | |
annual rate of real GMP growth. | 11:37 | |
You have to apparently have M1 growing at something | 11:40 | |
like a 10% rate, and you may ask whether a 10% rate | 11:45 | |
of growth of M1 will not cause inflation to | 11:51 | |
really accelerate? | 11:57 | |
Well, the answer is no. | 11:59 | |
Not according to the best judgment of the | 12:03 | |
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reduced form | 12:06 | |
regression equations because within 77' itself | 12:10 | |
the rate of growth of prices stays at just about | 12:15 | |
four and a half percent no matter what you do. | 12:18 | |
If you let the money supply M1 grow 4%, | 12:20 | |
it stays at four and half percent. | 12:25 | |
It stays at four and half percent, | 12:28 | |
if you grow it 10%. | 12:29 | |
There's a little difference between the two | 12:30 | |
patterns in the second year but it simply | 12:34 | |
means that the rate of inflation doesn't drop | 12:36 | |
as much if we let M1 grow at 10% as it will drop | 12:40 | |
if we let it grow at 4%. | 12:46 | |
If we let it grow at 4% rate, we'll have | 12:48 | |
inflation of only 2.6%. | 12:51 | |
I don't believe these numbers, by the way. | 12:54 | |
But they're what the methodology of the | 12:57 | |
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, applied even | 12:58 | |
handedly will give you. | 13:01 | |
Which simply shows, I guess, that I want to | 13:04 | |
stick with my early judgment, that this model was | 13:10 | |
just lucky in the early years of 1971, | 13:12 | |
what seemed to be predicting well. | 13:17 | |
As I described | 13:18 | |
in one of my financial times articles, a reality | 13:23 | |
staggered like a drunken sailor into the gun sights | 13:26 | |
of the reduced form model of the | 13:30 | |
monitorist Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, | 13:33 | |
and what a drunken sailor can do on the swings | 13:35 | |
he can undo on the roundabouts, and having | 13:40 | |
staggered into the gun sights, he staggered out | 13:43 | |
of those gun sights and actually the | 13:50 | |
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Dr. Lee Anderson, | 13:51 | |
doesn't publish this sort of thing. | 13:53 | |
The DRI had to dig it up. | 13:54 | |
Now I wish they had done something further. | 13:56 | |
I'm appreciative of this. | 14:00 | |
I don't mean to appreciative because it | 14:01 | |
confirms my earlier judgment but it give me an | 14:04 | |
extra insight into what preps the Nacacgamas and | 14:07 | |
the Schobeyschool economists, the shadow | 14:13 | |
open market committee, ought to be thinking | 14:16 | |
on the basis of it's theory, | 14:19 | |
but I'd like to have a little more insight. | 14:21 | |
What I wish it had done, DRI, Chris Skelly had done, | 14:22 | |
was to put in the M2 version of this, to see whether | 14:28 | |
the story is very much different. | 14:35 | |
I say that not because I have reason to believe | 14:40 | |
M2 is the perfect predictor, and M1 is the bad | 14:45 | |
predictor, but because we know that M1's been | 14:49 | |
going sour, in a degree that is greater than that | 14:52 | |
of M2, so I'd like to take the monitorist | 14:58 | |
not as they were a few years back, but the best | 15:00 | |
version of monitorist today, to see what insights, | 15:03 | |
genuine, it can give us, and how I feel in terms of | 15:07 | |
all the patterns of experience that I'm able to | 15:14 | |
observe about it's best judgements. | 15:18 | |
David | I was talking to City Bank today, | 15:23 |
which is another monitorist, and they're talking | 15:25 | |
about a 5.5% to 6% GMP increase, more likely 5.5%. | 15:27 | |
Paul | Real growth. | 15:32 |
And in 1977 itself, did you happen to inquire on what | 15:37 | |
they based this on? | 15:45 | |
David | Well, their basing it on the past pattern | 15:46 |
of about six or seven percent increase in M1. | 15:49 | |
Paul | I see. | 15:53 |
Well, what the city bank did when the St, Louis | 15:55 | |
model became so disastrously off in a squared errors, | 15:58 | |
was to put in a trend factor on velocity. | 16:03 | |
David | Right, and this is their main concern right now, | 16:07 |
so their velocity has a change again. | 16:08 | |
Paul | Yes, right. | 16:12 |
Well as Leif Olson, who's director of research | 16:14 | |
for the City Bank has said, monitorist have become so | 16:18 | |
grown up and so mature, that they now divide in | 16:22 | |
their opinions. | 16:27 | |
And you can get a monitorist almost anywhere | 16:28 | |
in the spectrum of optimism and pessimism with | 16:31 | |
respect to the degree of expansion, just the way you | 16:33 | |
can get a eclectic post-cainjin. | 16:38 | |
So it's just another way of saying we don't | 16:41 | |
yet have a basis for the crucial experiments | 16:44 | |
which can sharpen our discrimination | 16:48 | |
between the insights by one method and | 16:51 | |
the insights by alternative method. | 16:55 | |
David | The labor department has announced | 16:57 |
that consumer prices have rose at a 4.8% rate | 17:00 | |
last year. | 17:03 | |
Can we do as well this year? | 17:04 | |
Paul | I doubt it. | 17:06 |
Most of the forecast which I have seen, | 17:08 | |
whether monitorist or non monitorist, | 17:11 | |
are of the opinion that the rate of inflation | 17:16 | |
is likely to be something like 5.5%. | 17:20 | |
Now, let me say that like most of the 2 million | 17:23 | |
Americans that were listening to the Labor Department | 17:27 | |
when it made it's announcement the last few days, | 17:32 | |
that the consumer price index had risen only | 17:35 | |
4.8% in the year 1976 itself. | 17:37 | |
That's from beginning of the year to the end | 17:42 | |
of the year. | 17:44 | |
Like most of those people, I think that | 17:45 | |
I was little bit relieved. | 17:48 | |
That shows how depraved we've become. | 17:50 | |
David | Yes. (laughs) | 17:53 |
Paul | That a almost 5% inflation is greeted | 17:56 |
as tiding of great joy. | 18:00 | |
Well now the reason of course is we've come to | 18:02 | |
fear worse. | 18:05 | |
What it means is that on my now account, | 18:07 | |
in a Massachusets bank, my checking account, | 18:14 | |
upon which I ear 5% nominal interest, | 18:18 | |
which is about the best deal in town, | 18:23 | |
it's not a deal available to most of my listeners, | 18:25 | |
who don't happen to live in Yankee country, | 18:29 | |
in New England. | 18:33 | |
But for liquid funds sits a pretty good deal. | 18:36 | |
That's still in real terms, only earned me | 18:39 | |
two-tenths of 1%. | 18:43 | |
Not a easy way to get rich, not a way to provide | 18:46 | |
for the goodies you're going to need in your | 18:49 | |
old age, but remember this. | 18:53 | |
We were having 12 and 14% interest rates, | 18:55 | |
I mean inflation rates, back when my friendly | 18:59 | |
savings bank was still only paying me five, six, seven, | 19:05 | |
seven and three-quarters percent, maximum, | 19:14 | |
on time deposits, and at that time I was making a negative | 19:17 | |
real rate of interest. | 19:22 | |
Well, with permissions aside, we still have, | 19:24 | |
out of every 10 forecasters you should shake | 19:30 | |
a stick at, and couldn't happen to a nicer | 19:33 | |
bunch of chaps, and to shake something at them, | 19:36 | |
you have that one fella from White Welding Company, is it, | 19:40 | |
who thinks that yes we can do as well as 4.8%, | 19:45 | |
we can do a little bit better than that | 19:51 | |
in the coming year, we can perhaps do with | 19:55 | |
3.5%. | 19:56 | |
The equations of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis | 19:58 | |
have just told you, tell us that we will do better. | 20:03 | |
Because I'm sure that the rate of growth of M1 | 20:09 | |
will be in the interval that I've given you, | 20:12 | |
somewhere between two and 10%, | 20:16 | |
and everywhere in that interval you have a 4.5% | 20:19 | |
rate of increase in the overall GMP deflator. | 20:22 | |
Now, the GMP deflator includes lost of items | 20:27 | |
which the Consumers Price Index doesn't | 20:31 | |
and excludes some, but they agree pretty much. | 20:34 | |
The Labor Department has told us that the reason | 20:36 | |
we did as well as we did this last year was the | 20:39 | |
meat prices fell a little. | 20:40 | |
And we closed the year actually, just at par, | 20:44 | |
same as the average for the year. | 20:47 | |
But, the GMP deflator as a whole in the fourth quarter, | 20:51 | |
was up a little bit more than the consumers | 20:55 | |
price index was, and most of the forecast | 20:57 | |
which I've seen suggests that somewhere around | 21:01 | |
5.5% including Sam Nacagama because he thinks we're | 21:06 | |
going to overdo it with the fiscal stimulus, | 21:14 | |
and that's going to send interest rates and fears | 21:17 | |
of inflation up, and it means the consumers price | 21:20 | |
index, presumably in his kind of scenario | 21:24 | |
will be going up more than 6% in the last half of | 21:27 | |
the year. | 21:30 | |
Well, I think that the one thing that economists are | 21:32 | |
not very good at predicting is prices, | 21:36 | |
and as a result you should have quite a | 21:41 | |
probability spread around these predictions | 21:45 | |
for good luck and for bad luck, | 21:48 | |
but the center around which that spread should | 21:51 | |
be formed, it seems to me on the pattern | 21:54 | |
of the evidence, both as interpreted | 21:58 | |
by monitorist and as interpreted by | 22:03 | |
the rest of the crowd, would be that the odds | 22:08 | |
are against us doing quite as well as 4.8%. | 22:14 | |
David | Mr. Carter seems to be expecting an | 22:18 |
economic summit this year. | 22:21 | |
What can he do at such a meeting? | 22:23 | |
Paul | I think that a summit would be a good | 22:26 |
idea at this time. | 22:31 | |
It not only gives him a chance to meet some of the | 22:32 | |
other leaders who he hasn't as yet met, | 22:35 | |
but this is a interval of opportunity. | 22:40 | |
It seems to me that when you | 22:45 | |
tote up the weight in the world GMP, | 22:49 | |
of the US, of Japan, and Western Germany, | 22:53 | |
you get a critical mass there. | 22:58 | |
And I think that it's up to the three of us, | 23:01 | |
in concert hopefully, to unite on a program | 23:05 | |
which will, because it's a united program, | 23:12 | |
because it's done simultaneously, | 23:18 | |
be more feasible for each one of us, | 23:20 | |
in terms of balance of payments constraints | 23:22 | |
for example, and would be a very good thing for us | 23:24 | |
domestically, and I think it will be an | 23:27 | |
excellent thing for the next tier of important | 23:30 | |
countries. | 23:33 | |
France, the Lowcountires, Scandinavia, for example. | 23:36 | |
Canada. | 23:41 | |
And I can't think in these days of North/South | 23:43 | |
dialogue, when we're concerned about the terms of trade, | 23:46 | |
for raw materials. | 23:51 | |
For metals, for fibers, for food stuffs, | 23:53 | |
I can't think of anything that would be more salutary | 23:59 | |
for the developing part of the world, | 24:05 | |
than to have this lull in the world recovery. | 24:07 | |
Which is more serious abroad than here. | 24:13 | |
Put into the history and replaced by greater | 24:20 | |
expansion. | 24:25 | |
Now, its a good wind that helps and awful | 24:26 | |
lot of people. | 24:33 | |
It's also going to help OPEC, which of course | 24:34 | |
has been hurt by the world wide recession, | 24:39 | |
and by the lull in the recovery from that | 24:44 | |
recession, but I don't think that you can | 24:48 | |
keep a throttle on the prosperity | 24:51 | |
all around the world in order to try to hasten | 24:54 | |
that day when the oligopoly, or the cartel | 24:57 | |
is to break down. | 25:02 | |
As matter of fact because of the two tier system | 25:04 | |
engineer by Saudi Arabia, and things seem | 25:08 | |
to be going at the moment Saudi Arabia's way, | 25:12 | |
to the degree that she can expand her production, | 25:16 | |
the people in the upper tier are the ones who are | 25:18 | |
sweating. | 25:22 | |
I think that the long-run problem of | 25:24 | |
meeting the energy situation, has to be undertaken | 25:29 | |
on it's merits and not by means of running | 25:35 | |
as very stagnant world wide economy. | 25:38 | |
David | Do you think that the underdeveloped | 25:46 |
countries will be a problem as far as their | 25:50 | |
credits are concerned? | 25:53 | |
That have all these huge multi-billion dollars | 25:54 | |
worth of loans from the United States | 25:57 | |
and Western Europe. | 25:59 | |
Do you think that these could go into default? | 26:01 | |
Paul | I would say without any doubt in my mind, | 26:04 |
that if we were not in 1930, that the stage | 26:08 | |
has been set for two or three years now for some | 26:16 | |
really startling defaults and standstill arrangements | 26:19 | |
and Hoover would have to come forward with a moratorium, | 26:24 | |
but we don't live in that kind of world, | 26:28 | |
and there is every indication that the weak | 26:31 | |
sisters are going to be accommodated. | 26:36 | |
I would say that we seem to have turned a corner. | 26:40 | |
The real fear of a crisis, and the tremendous | 26:47 | |
amount of steam, at least rhetorical steam, | 26:51 | |
which was building up for a wide spread | 26:53 | |
forgiveness of indebtedness. | 26:58 | |
That was part of the South/North dialogue, | 27:04 | |
with the Soviet Union, I think aiding and abetting | 27:06 | |
the have not countries. | 27:10 | |
That seems to have been have abated, gone into | 27:11 | |
abidance, and what the developing countries | 27:15 | |
now want is a little bit more accommodation. | 27:20 | |
It's within our feasibility constraints to give | 27:22 | |
them that extra accommodation. | 27:30 | |
When I say we I mean the IMF, the world bank, | 27:31 | |
the US, the large banks in the US. | 27:38 | |
The zero dollar money instrumentality, | 27:41 | |
generally speaking. | 27:45 | |
So that, I've been a little bit less | 27:48 | |
apprehensive that someone of the big New York banks | 27:52 | |
would turn out to be in trouble with the | 27:58 | |
bank examiners, because of a rash of defaults | 28:00 | |
on governmental loans. | 28:06 | |
There still is a lot of soft paper out. | 28:09 | |
One of the reasons why most of use economists | 28:15 | |
have not panicked that we're about to go back | 28:19 | |
into another recession, was that the quality | 28:23 | |
of credit seemed to be in pretty good position, | 28:26 | |
except for this one trouble spot, | 28:33 | |
the governmental part of the picture. | 28:36 | |
Well, it looks as if even that trouble spot | 28:39 | |
is not going to fester and erupt, | 28:42 | |
and is contained. | 28:46 | |
I'd like to point out, our time is very short, | 28:47 | |
that the data resources any lists, | 28:52 | |
in particular, there's an article by | 28:56 | |
Adam Sinai called Financial Shortages or Surplus, | 28:59 | |
he comes out with a very optimistic appraisal | 29:04 | |
of how healthy the financial situation is, | 29:07 | |
how liquid the previously strained corporate | 29:13 | |
sector has become. | 29:19 | |
And so, up until the time when this liquidity | 29:22 | |
turns into a reverse problem, that people have the | 29:28 | |
freedom to spend and overspend and overheat | 29:32 | |
the economy, he does not find from a low funds | 29:35 | |
standpoint, great signals of distress, | 29:39 | |
not signals that the interest rate structure | 29:46 | |
is going to tighten up a lot. | 29:49 | |
Now I guess I'm a little less sanguine, | 29:51 | |
than his analysis would suggest, but I'm going | 29:54 | |
to study it further and read and reread it | 29:57 | |
to see whether I really should be as apprehensive | 29:59 | |
and pessimistic as I have found myself being. | 30:04 | |
It's a reasoned argument worth the studying in-depth. | 30:08 | |
David | Well, thank you very much Dr. Samuelson. | 30:14 |
If you subscribers would like to ask questions | 30:16 | |
of Professor Paul Samuelson, or suggest subjects | 30:19 | |
for him to discuss, please write to | 30:21 | |
Instructional Dynamics Incorporated, | 30:23 | |
450 East Ohio St, Chicago, Illinois, 60611. | 30:27 |
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