DEPRESSION TRICKLE IN US

It was 1977 when the Vietnam War ended and the GIs came home. They began taking out loans and spending some of their savings. At that time, in America, monetary inflation as a result of the war and the large amount of savings sloshing around in banks started creeping into the prices of tangible goods such as metals, food, and energy. Social Security benefits were rising at an annual pace of near 10%. The economy was affluent with liquidity.

In 1979, Paul Volcker stepped in as chairman of the Federal Reserve and realized that Americans should keep faith in the U.S. dollar to save the Federal Reserve, along with the fractional banking system of the United States, from collapse. He raised the rates to 20 % whereby the system became purged of excess liquidity, though as an unintended aftermath. This made mass bankruptcies to ensue. Short term lending dried and the economy ceased to function properly. However, complex investment derivatives and globalization postponed the inevitable situation. But, as an aftermath of globalization, big bulk of Dollar went to Chinese foreign exchange holdings because of massive trade deficit of America with China. This made a considerable dent on money supply in the economy. A huge amount of dollars went also into the reserves of oil exporting nations as well.  A further contraction in liquidity, resulting in a scare, came about on account of the collapse of the dot.com bubble. However, the dollars which were initially going into foreign reserves, but eventually returned to the U.S. economy in the form of purchased U.S. treasuries. All the same, the net inflow of dollars remained negative and the gap went on being widened. To keep the economy moving forward, the money supply and loan base needed to grow at a faster rate than the rate at which liquidity was being contracting.

The members of the Federal Reserve understood that for this economy to move forward, something needed to be done, and they took serious action. They immediately began printing money at large and started slashing interest rates so as to make home loans to become more appealing. In addition thereto, exotic lending instruments became created in order to provide more loans to the already strapped consumer. Hence, the beginning of sub prime mortgages came about. This helped the economy run a little bit longer but how much longer? The problem of current account deficit running in the red persisted whereby dollars went on continuously to flowing out of the country. By and by, the economy went on advancing towards the point where it becomes unable to sell any of its debt and the consumers become unable to take further loan. Large number of loans started going bad and the banks became short of capital to make further loans. Ultimately the melting point became reached, the faith in US Dollar and US banking system collapsed and a deeply threatening recessive trend settled in the US economy. The bailout strategy and likewise monetary measures could not check the money going wrong way. Nor the trade enhancement efforts could prove fruitful to mitigate, to the required extent, the increasing dollar reserve holdings by other countries like China through currency manipulations based on their cheaply produced exports. The recessive trend of US economy stepped beyond national boundaries through international transactions and trapped almost all European countries. Thus, almost the whole Europe and America came in the ambit of the scaring economic turmoil called ‘The Depression 2008’.

DEPRESSION TRICKLE IN INDIA

On the other hand, Indian economy (like other developing countries) was still suffering from persistent inflationary pressure on account of heavy autonomous investment aiming to achieve increasing growth rate. The inflation rate touched a blatting height of 12.91 % in the week ending on 2nd of Aug. 2008, despite that the income distribution was highly unequal, the middleman profit margins were unjustifiably high and banks were enjoying sufficient saving deposits. There was being observed sufficient demand in market despite the prices were increasing on account of increasing costs of production due to illogically heavy payments to CEOs, MDs and other likewise personnel along with superfluously enormous expenditures on advertisements. There has been prevailing mass unemployment but the wages and salaries were increasing. This shows that the Indian economy was running in a paradoxical condition. Thus, only a small spark was needed to start the reverse gear to make Indian economy advancing towards the point of meltdown. Being exposed to the risks of trading with the depression stricken countries and the cheaply produced export manipulating countries like China, on account of globalization, the Indian economy ultimately got the spark which was though unwanted but symptomatically due. The prevailing inflationary pressure started being mitigated. The front line concerns observing price decrease started crying for help instead of finding cost reducing ways and means to cut the unnecessarily and illogically raged costs. The government and the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) mistakenly came to their help in haste and that too following the way of bailouts as inspired from US. A short detail of the measures taken by the government and RBI is as under.

(1) SBI declared cut in various banking rates (REPO rate, SLR, Reverse REPO rate, CRR etc.) on N0v.02, 2008 to provide extra capital of Rs 850 billion in market. Including all previous measures RBI provided total extra capital worth Rs 2750 billion in the market up to this declaration.

(2) The government declared on Nov. 18, 2008, Rs 500 billion to be invested by the Central Government with public-private partnership in infrastructure projects.

(3) SBI declared on Dec. 06, 2008, a special loan facility of Rs 110 billion to help housing and small industries.

(4) The government declared on Dec. 06, 2008, a budgetary help worth Rs 150 billion to infrastructure projects.

(5) The government declared on Dec. 07, 2008, a bailout package worth Rs 3000 billion to rescue the economy from depression grip.

(6) The government declared another economic package on Jan. 02, 2009 to remove slackness in the economy due to the world depression. In addition thereto RBI declared further cut in various banking rates that would bring about an increase worth Rs 200 billion in the liquidity in banking sector.

All the measures mentioned above could not prove fruitful in keeping the economy beyond the ambit of depression grip. Hence, Indian economy also, like US economy, went on slowing down making the remedial measures to slink. The inflation rate came down from 12.91 % in the week ending on Aug. 02, 2008, to 5.24 % in the week ending on Jan. 03, 2009. Thus, the average downfall in the inflation rate came out to be of 0.37 % per week (approximately) during the period of five months. Moreover, the trend of per-week downfall was found to be increasing. It was 0.44 % in the week ending on Nov. 22, 2008 and came to 0.67 % in the week ending on Jan. 03, 2009. The average per-week downfall in inflation rate was 0f 0.20 % within the period from Aug, 02 to Oct. 18, 2008. It came out to 0.44 % in the week ending on Nov. 22, 2008 and to 0.67 % in the week ending on Jan. 03, 2009. During the above said period of 22 weeks (approximately five months) the per-week downfall of 1.10 % was the maximum which came about in the week ending on Dec. 06, 2008.

The vehicle manufacturing sector became badly affected. The sale of passenger cars came 6.98 % down to 82105 cars in Dec. 2008 as compared to 88272 cars in Dec. 2007. The decrease in the sale of passenger vehicles came out to be 13.85 % as the sale remained 99352 vehicles in Dec. 2008 in comparison to 115334 vehicles in Dec. 2007. The sale of trucks and buses came 58.28 % down as it was 42961 vehicles in Dec.2007 and came down to 17920 vehicles in Dec 2008. Three wheelers also observed 28.98 % decrease in the sale as the sale was 26823 in Dec.2007 which came down to 19048 vehicles in Dec.2008. The aftermath of this downfall in the sale of automobiles resulted into both the direct and the indirect cuts in the prices of all automobiles. For example, price cut from Rs 125000 to Rs 200000 on Volvo trucks and from Rs 16000 to Rs 37000 on Eicher trucks, The prices of Hero Honda products have been lowered from Rs 1000 to Rs 2000, the prices of different products of Bajaj Auto stand lowered  up to Rs 2100, Bajaj Auto also lowered the prices of its three wheeler products up to Rs 4400, General Motors India made a price cut on their different cars from Rs 8000 to Rs 16500 and Ford India lowered the price of its model ‘Fusion’ by Rs 18000, Fiesta from Rs 2100 to Rs 25000 and Endeavor from Rs 47000 to Rs 54000. Similarly, Maruti Suzuki started giving discount from Rs 15,000 to Rs 35,000 on its cars and Tata Motors gave relaxation on its cars from Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000. Moreover, Hyundai Motor India Ltd. decided to sell its popular model, SANTRO GL (Solid) model, at 10 years old price of Rs 299000 along with giving relaxation worth Rs 15,773 in the form of free insurance and accessories in non-AC segment, worth Rs 26,000 on SANTRO GLS model and from Rs 7,000 to Rs 25,000 on GATZ, Accent and Verna models.

Some of manufacturing companies are exercising wage cut indirectly through short term block closers, cut in working hours or cut in week days. For example, Tata Motors observed fourth block-closer for three days in its heavy vehicles plant at Jamshedpur from 28th to 31st December 2008, TELCON (Tata Construction Equipment Co. Ltd.), a company with 60 % partnership of Tata observed a second block-closer in its Jamshedpur plant, within a period of one month, for three days from 25th to 27th of December 2008, Telco Construction Equipment Co. Ltd. (TELCON) observed a four days block-closer from 4th to 7th Dec. 2008 and ZF Steering, a vehicle ancillary company declared a second block-closers from Jan. 21st to 27th, having already observed the first one from Dec. 21st to 27th, 2008. On the other hand, Ashok Leyland observed five days week for two months.

Some companies have started to resort even to retrenchment of employees to some extent despite restrictive directions from the government. Retrenchment of 15000 temporary employees in the ancillary industries of Tata Motors, job loss for more than half of a million employees of depression stricken textile industry and discharge of 60 % workforce of manufacturing facilities of Volvo India are some of the examples.

GOVERNMENT RELUCTANCE

Despite the frequent news coming from media for last two weeks, regarding different concerns placing demand for and pleading further bailouts, the government seems to pay no heed to this issue and show reluctance to exercise another bailout in near future. I think the government has now come to understand that bailout is a weapon of no use to make the current turmoil good since it neither improves income distribution nor it checks the money going wrong ways. Companies intend to preserve their profits by making good the deficit in profit, caused on account of demand based price cut, through bailout proceeds and not through cost cutting, in its stead. They speak of increased cost but want not to accept that the rapid cost increase has come about not on account of raw material price increase and wage rate increase but due to the illogically, unjustifiably and arbitrarily enormous payments to advertisement agencies, the directors, CEOs and likewise personnel, on one hand, and due to irrelevant, unfair and unjust profit margins of middlemen or traders (some times even up to 10 times of the whole sale price), on the other hand.

SCARING 2009

However, the reason of the government silence may also be the coming end of the term of Congress Party’s government. If it is so and the depressive effects are being suppressed without undertaking legitimate and compatible measures of depression encountering, there will be a blatting invasion of austere depression on Indian economy after the due elections are completed. If so happens, the later half of 2009 will become very difficult and rather scaring for us since the Indian economy would be thrown into a sore predicament. If the condition of rapidly falling inflation rate, banking rates, stock market index etc. persisted, the under developed Indian economy may have more difficult to get through 2009, in comparison to the well developed US economy.

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V P Singh
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