Hello my friends, today is September 30th, my name is Joseph and this is Markets Weekly. Now this week we're going to talk about three things.
大家好,今天是9月30日,我叫约瑟夫,欢迎来到本期的《市场周报》。本周我们将讨论三个主题。
First, we have to talk about the topic du jour, that is the government shutdown. And I'll tell you why, it's nothing to worry about at all.
首先,我们需要谈论当下的热门话题,那就是政府停摆。我会告诉你为什么,这根本不值得担心。
Secondly, let's talk a little bit about the ongoing labor movement. We have some small updates on the UAW strike, but it also looks like labor has opened up a new front in Las Vegas. Labor is gaining steam and that suggests that wages will continue to rise.
And lastly, let's go over the inflation data that we got the past week, which was very positive, both in the US as well as in the Euro zone. And we'll talk about what that means for monetary policy going forward.
Okay, starting with the government shutdown. Now, first, let's talk about what a government shutdown is, because many times people confuse it with a debt ceiling episode, which in my view is much more mysterious.
So the way the government operates in the US is that it taxes and spends like every other government in the world. But it also basically always spends more than it receives and taxes. So it's always borrowing money to make up the difference.
If it can't borrow money, it's possible that the US government would run out of money and have to selectively default. So as long as the US government can continue to borrow, then it won't run out of money. But when there's a debt ceiling episode, so the US government is unable to issue more debt, it is possible that the US government will run out of money and have to default on some people either in the financial markets or in the real economy.
For example, it could be that the US government defaults on treasury holders, or they could default on vendors, for example, military contractors that they owe money to. In either case, that would have an impact on the real economy.
Now, we talked about in an earlier episode how defaulting on treasury was very, very, very low probability. But it's still a probability and things can go wrong. So when you have a debt ceiling episode, I think there is a potential for some significant disruption in the real and the financial economy.
Now a government shutdown is very different from that. In a government shutdown, the US government has plenty of money. It still has access to the debt markets, so money is not a problem.
But according to the US law, even if you have money, Congress still has to pass a budget and allocate that money to various departments. If there is no budget, then that means these departments don't have money. And that's a problem today. So Congress right now is having difficulty getting together a budget that would fund various departments.
And because there's no budget, these parts of the US government run out of money and they have to shut down. So what that means in practice is that some government employees are going to go on a paid holiday.
So when there's a government shutdown, government workers that are essential, they continue to work. Maybe you can think of them as people who are issuing treasury securities or maybe people are part of the security apparatus and things like that. They continue to work. They just don't get paid because their department doesn't have any money.
However, eventually, eventually, of course, one day the government will go back to work that it will be all resolved and they'll get back pay. For the government employees that are deemed to be non-essential, you can think of them as maybe some people who stamp visas, maybe some people who work in national parks, people like that, they just stay home and they don't get paid. But eventually, when the government shut down, it's over. They receive back pay. So they basically get go on paid vacation.
Now, this has some real economy impact, of course, because if people are not receiving income, maybe they're less likely to be spending at that moment. Now, they could catch up to that spending later on when they get back pay.
But then let's say that usually you eat at a restaurant for lunch. You're not going to work, so you're not eating at that restaurant. Later on, when you come back, you're not going to eat extra meals to make up for that. So part of that is just lost services and stuff that never come back. So it's going to have some impact on economic growth, but not a lot.
So if there's a shutdown though, historically speaking, it doesn't actually last that long. I think the longest shutdown we ever had was just a few years ago and it was 35 days.
The way that this works is that when there's a shutdown, there's a lot of people in Washington DC who are unhappy. After all, there's a lot of people who basically either are not getting paid or don't have anything to do. And so since the congresspeople, they sit in Washington DC, they are very close to everyone who's unhappy. And so there's a lot of political pressure for them to do something. So these government shutdowns usually don't last very long.
Now, the holdup right now seems to be that there are parts of the Republican Party who would like to see larger spending cuts, perhaps less money to Ukraine. And some people would also like to have more funding for border protection. Now, the Republicans control the house in the US, but their control is very thin. So in order to have the votes to pass what they want, they really can't afford anyone to defect. And yet there are these small groups of people who have who realize that they have power and are standing firm to their demands. So right now it seems to be a game of chicken and we'll see what happens. As time goes on, historically speaking, the party that holds up these negotiations tends to do poorly in public polls. And so again, my best guess is that this if this happens, it really doesn't go on very long. And it's going to be a non issue and we'll go off and talk about the next thing in the news very shortly and we'll forget all about this.
Okay, the second thing that I want to talk about is what's happening with the labor strikes. So this past week, we had again, the United Auto Workers, as we discussed before, are striking. They're striking against a few major American auto companies and selectively at some locations. And their opening offer was 40% pay increases over a few years, as well as shorter work weeks and more benefits and so forth. Basically, they were asking for a lot. Some interesting developments over the past week is that President Biden basically flew over to Michigan and joined the picket line. And President Trump, surely afterwards, also flew to Michigan and gave a speech. So what we're seeing right now is that there's a tremendous amount of political support for labor. Now, it's not always like that. I think traditionally speaking, you would have more disagreement within government. Maybe you would just maybe you would have politicians simply to stand with the big companies. But that's not the political climate right now. And I think that makes it much more likely for the United Auto Workers to succeed in what they want. After all, so if you are a big company in the US, obviously you get federal contracts and obviously get all sorts of federal subsidies. Now, if the guy that is your big client and give you lots of money is basically strongly, strongly suggesting that you should be giving more money to the workers, you kind of have to. Now, some reports suggest that the United Auto Workers are still negotiating that they've come down a bit from their very, very high offer. But it does look like they're going in for you're going to end up with a sizable pay increase.
This past week, though, we also had interesting developments in another part of the labor market. The people who work in the casinos in Las Vegas also voted to go on strike. Now, this is about 50,000 people in Las Vegas. And they no doubt are looking at what's happening throughout the country and looking at the political climate and thinking to themselves, now this is the time they're seeing.
We have an election year coming up. We're seeing they're seeing all the politicians siding with labor. And they're seeing that, hey, UPS, they got big raises, United Airlines got big raises, looks like you added auto workers are going to get big raises. We got to do something too. Now, what exactly do they want? Well, they didn't actually spell it out. I went on their website and it looks like they're asking for the biggest raises they've ever gotten in their union history. Now, they didn't say how much they wanted, but that sounds big. And also know that Las Vegas is a place that is, is really busy right now.
So you have a lot of conferences, you have a lot of concerts, you have the F1 racing that's going to be there in November. So these casinos, they definitely want to be able to be seen as reliable and continue to function. And they need workers for that to happen. So my guess is that if this happens, maybe this happens, they're going to get big raises. Another possibility is that the casinos really just see what's happening in the world in just cave. But in any case, again, labor throughout the country is becoming more important and no doubt, there will be others who follow. So wages are going higher throughout the country.
Now, wage growth over the past few years went up a lot and it's been moderating. But with all these labor negotiations going on, it looks like there's still some upward momentum, which we have to keep in mind as we watch inflation closely, which brings us to our last topic. So this past week, we got some very encouraging inflation data. So in the US, the Fed's favorite gauge of inflation is core PCE. Core PCE was expected to print at 0% to 2% month over month, but it actually only printed at 0.1%.
At its current rate, core PCE is going to actually print below the Fed's expectation at the end of the year. So inflation is really hitting in the right direction. Not just in the US, though, this past week, we also had very positive inflation data in the Eurozone. Now inflation in the Eurozone, of course, still above target, but it continues to print below expectations with a later sprint a bit above 4%. It's heading in the right direction.
Now, what that this all means for monetary policy, of course, is that it's becoming increasingly likely that the DCB and the Fed are done with their hikes. So after the inflation print in the US, President Williams of the New York Fed, who is one of the top three people at the Fed, basically came out and suggested that he's going to pause in November. And that is definitely totally reasonable to do, but he still leaves open the window of a hike later on. The ECB looks like the market is beginning to think that they're done as well.
Now, there are a couple things to keep in mind, though, before just thinking that it's mission accomplished. Again, like we just discussed, we have labor movements hitting up that are asking for more wages, more wage gains. So that, again, that could be upward pressure on inflation. Now, I also note, though, that the Biden administration appears to be trying to handle this by increasing the supply of labor. We had reports of the Biden administration.
It's basically given work authorization for a few hundred thousand Venezuelans in the US. Now, if you suddenly add a few hundred thousand people into the labor force, obviously that's going to dampen down on wages. So we'll see how this plays out. The second thing, of course, that is potentially upward momentum for inflation is energy prices. Oil continues to march higher and has yet to fully feed through into inflation. So depending on how that goes, of course, the oil kit tumble. And the next time we have some kind of financial disturbance, it could soar if, let's say, we have geopolitical developments. It's really hard to say.
So at the moment, my best guess is that the Fed at the moment would be done. But there's always the possibility that these things heat up again and push inflation higher and encourages them to do another hike in December. Again, their data depended. So we'll see how the data goes. And this past this development on the inflation front was very welcome by the bond market, of course. Bonds were looking pretty dicey throughout the week. This inflation print bought a little bit of stability. Bonds, of course, rallied on these good inflation prints, but then gave a lot of that back. My sense still is that the highs are not yet in for 10 year treasuries this year.