US productivity was weak in the third quarter, while labor costs were revised lower - CNBC

U.S. worker productivity fell by the most in nearly four years in the third quarter, the government confirmed, while growth in unit labor costs was not as robust as initially thought.

The Labor Department said on Tuesday nonfarm productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, decreased at a 0.2% annualized rate in the last quarter, the biggest drop since the fourth quarter of 2015.

Productivity was previously reported to have decreased at a 0.3% pace in the July-September quarter. A rebound in hours, driven by a surge in the volatile self-employed and unpaid family workers component, outpaced output in the third quarter.

Productivity grew at an unrevised 2.5% rate in the second quarter. Economists polled by Reuters had expected third-quarter productivity would be revised up to show it falling at a 0.1% rate.

The government last month revised up third-quarter gross domestic product growth to a 2.1% rate from a 1.9% pace.

Compared to the third quarter of 2018, productivity increased at a 1.5% rate, instead of the previously reported 1.4% pace. Tepid productivity suggests the economy is unlikely to achieve the Trump administration's goal of 3% annual growth.

Productivity increased at an average annual rate of 1.3% from 2007 to 2018, below its long-term rate of 2.1% from 1947 to 2018, indicating that the speed at which the economy can grow over a long period without igniting inflation has slowed.

Some economists blame soft productivity on a shortage of workers as well as the impact of rampant drug addiction in some parts of the country. Others also argue that low capital expenditure, which they say has resulted in a sharp drop in the capital-to-labor ratio, is holding down productivity.

There is also a belief that productivity is being inaccurately measured, especially on the information technology side. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said in October the U.S. central bank was "carefully assessing the implications of possibly mismeasured productivity gains."

Fed officials were scheduled to begin a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday. The central bank is not expected to cut interest rates on Wednesday after reducing borrowing costs in October for the third time this year.

Hours worked rose at a revised 2.5% rate last quarter. That was up from the 2.4% pace estimated in November.

Soft productivity last quarter lifted labor costs, though the pace of increase was not as robust as previously estimated. Unit labor costs, the price of labor per single unit of output, increased at a 2.5% rate in the third quarter. They were previously reported to have advanced at a 3.6% rate.

Compared to the third quarter of 2018, labor costs grew at a 2.2% rate, rather than the previously estimated 3.1%.

Hourly compensation increased at a 2.3% rate in the third quarter, instead of the originally reported 3.3% pace. Hourly compensation rose at a 3.7% rate compared to the third quarter of 2018.

Last quarter's gains in unit labor costs and compensation are in line with other measures showing moderate wages gains, suggesting inflation will probably continue to run below the Fed's 2% target.

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2019-12-10 13:30:00Z
CAIiEAV80LS4pyyG7BQTMR_F64EqGQgEKhAIACoHCAow2Nb3CjDivdcCMIvwngY

Americans keep gorging on debt, thanks to the Federal Reserve - MarketWatch

The Federal Reserve raised official interest rates four times 2018, and investors were expecting more of the same this year.

As we know, that didn’t happen. The stock market plummeted in the fourth quarter of 2018, spreads between lower-quality fixed-income investments and government bonds widened, and with an effective fed funds rate of only 2.25%-2.50%, investors, bondholders and nearly everyone else clamored for the Fed to not only give up its interest-rate hikes, but to reverse course and lower rates.

In the previous two economic cycles, the fed funds topped 5%. So why did a mid-2% interest rate prompt such distress in the U.S. economy? The answer is a whole lot of debt.

Lower rates, higher spending

Investors should be careful now that the Fed has decreased rates three times in recent months. There are two reasons why. First, companies and consumers are ignoring the opportunity to lower their debt burdens. Second, lowering rates is normally a response to economic weakness, which means jobs and profits are at risk.

The chart below shows the tremendous increase in outstanding auto loans. With the Fed lowering rates, consumers took this as a cue to gorge more by borrowing as opposed to paying down loans. Consumers are increasingly financing their cars, and rising interest rates mean higher monthly payments for more people.

Another large problem area is corporate debt. Businesses have been the biggest debt hogs in this expansion, increasing their debt by roughly 40% relative to U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP. (See chart below.) This money has gone mostly to shareholders through increased dividends and a stock-repurchasing frenzy unmatched by history.

Given these burdensome piles of debt, even a slight increase in interest rates creates millions more in interest payments for consumers and corporations.

Apple’s debt binge

What can an investor do to protect herself from the debt-party hangover? Be aware of how your investments change their risk profiles over time. Consider these tech giants:

Company	Ticker	2008 debt	2019 debt
Microsoft Corp.	MSFT, -0.26%	$0	$72 billion
Amazon.com Inc.	AMZN, -0.12%	$0	$22 billion
Apple Inc.	AAPL, -1.40%	$0	$108 billion
Sources: Frank Capital Partners LLC, SEC filings

Microsoft MSFT, -0.26%, Amazon AMZN, -0.12%  and Apple AAPL, -1.40%, each roughly trillion-dollar companies, have borrowed more and more money in the economic expansion since 2009. While they are considered high-quality companies, it is worth noting that Apple’s revenue declined 2% in the fiscal year ended September 2019, and operating profit was down 10%. Net cash, or cash minus debt, decreased 20%, meaning that in the past 12 months, Apple used $25 billion more than what the company produced.

It’s not that Apple has lost its magic touch with consumer electronics such as the iPhone. But, clearly, the risk profile has changed with lots more debt, slowing to falling profits, and a huge market position vulnerable to economic shocks.

Too much exposure

Most other companies lack the strength and size of Big Tech but have also been overeating at the debt buffet. As real-time GDP trackers are showing slowing growth, with the U.S. expected to expand at less than a 1% annual rate in the fourth quarter, it is a great time to examine balance sheets for debt and historical company performance for exposure to economic cycles.

Just as you would head to higher ground to avoid a flood, different types of companies can offer better shelter. Of course, it is quite difficult to go bankrupt with no debt, but companies with pristine balance sheets and profitable operations are quite rare today. Instead, focus on the types of products and services that consumers and businesses must use, as opposed to those that are purchased in good times and with, you guessed it, more debt.

Brian Frank is CIO of Florida-based Frank Capital Partners LLC and portfolio manager of the Frank Value Fund. Follow him on Twitter @bfrankvalue.

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2019-12-10 11:18:16Z
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Global Stocks Decline as Tariff Deadline Weighs on Markets - The Wall Street Journal

Workers are building an electric bus at a factory in China's eastern Shandong province. Photo: str/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

By

Anna Isaac

Anna Isaac
The Wall Street Journal
• Biography
• @annaisaac
• anna.isaac@wsj.com

Updated Dec. 10, 2019 8:02 am ET

Global markets shifted lower Tuesday as investors look for fresh cues on the progress of the U.S.-China trade talks ahead of the weekend’s tariff deadline.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.4%, and the yield on U.S. 10-year Treasurys fell to 1.805%, down from 1.829% Monday. Gold, like government bonds, a traditional haven for investors, rose 0.5%. The pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 gauge fell 0.9%.

Markets are waiting on a decision from President Trump regarding whether he will delay instituting new tariffs on imports from China by a Dec. 15 deadline, as the levies carry the risk of boosting prices on products for American households and may prompt retaliatory measures.

Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers are taking aim at China with a new bill that would bar the use of federal funds to buy Chinese buses and railcars, congressional aides familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. That may complicate Mr. Trump’s efforts to reach an initial trade agreement, which would bring to a halt tensions that have made markets jittery for much of the year.

Over in China, the government last year introduced a sweeping policy to curtail its use of foreign technology products by awarding more contracts to domestic suppliers, people familiar with the matter said. The initiative, which hadn’t been made public, may help China double down on its efforts to decouple its technology sector from the U.S.

Markets have been parsing such signals as they try to gauge the potential outcome of the trade negotiations, though some investors say a degree of fatigue has also set in.

“On the one hand, there’s the boy-who-cried wolf aspect, where investors have heard it all before,” said Oliver Jones, market economist at Capital Economics. “On the other hand, the outcome really does impact equity markets one way or another, it impacts the earnings of big tech companies and manufacturers.”

Ahead of the New York opening bell, shares in NortonLifeLock climbed over 4% after The Wall Street Journal reported that the consumer-software company has attracted deal interest from a range of companies including rival McAfee.

AutoZone shares rose almost 6% in premarket trading after the car-parts retailer’s profit beat estimates for the quarter. Regeneron dropped 3.7% after French drugmaker Sanofi said it may sell its stake in the U.S. biotech company.

Within European equities, Sanofi climbed over 4% in Paris after the company said it would stop its research efforts in the challenging field of diabetes, and offered a bullish forecast for its star drug Dupixent.

The U.K.’s FTSE 100 index dropped almost 1%, in line with most other major European markets. Britain is preparing to head to the polls Thursday for a crucial election.

Federal Reserve officials are poised to begin a two-day meeting Tuesday, where they are expected to decide to hold steady on interest rates as Friday’s strong jobs report will likely reassure policy makers about the strength of the economy.

Write to Anna Isaac at anna.isaac@wsj.com

Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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2019-12-10 13:02:00Z
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Trump's National Security Adviser Warns China Wants Your Personal Information - NPR

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Robert O'Brien, President Trump's new national security adviser, has dire warnings for U.S. allies considering Huawei as a partner for 5G networks. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

President Trump's new national security adviser is warning of a information security doomsday scenario for U.S. allies that allow Chinese telecommunications company Huawei to build their next generation 5G networks.

Ambassador Robert O'Brien said countries that allow Huawei in could give China's communist government backdoor access to their citizens' most sensitive data.

"So every medical record, every social media post, every e-mail, every financial transaction, and every citizen of the country with cloud computing and artificial intelligence can be sucked up out of Huawei into massive servers in China," O'Brien told NPR in an interview.

"This isn't a theoretical threat," O'Brien said before speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum, an annual gathering of defense industry and military officials.

The Trump administration has taken measures to keep Huawei and other companies with ties to the Chinese government out of U.S. telecommunications systems. It's working hard to convince allies to do the same.

Australia, New Zealand and Japan block Huawei, but other allies such as Canada and Britain have said they are open to allowing the company build some less sensitive 5G networks.

O'Brien warned it would be difficult to have full intelligence sharing information with a partner whose network was tied to Beijing.

He described how China has assigned a "social credit score" to its own citizens based on information it gathers — information used to determine whether people can get on an airplane, buy a train ticket or get a particular job.

"But what if China had a social credit score for every single person in the world?" O'Brien said. "What if, for democracies, China knew every single personal, private piece of information about any of us and then could use that to micro-target people to influence elections?"

O'Brien's concerns underscore the complexity of current relations between the United States and China.

The Trump administration is in the throes of a bitter trade war with Beijing, has imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials believed to be involved in human rights abuses and has proposed a $2 billion U.S. weapons sale to Taipei, which Beijing objects to, claiming Taiwan is part of greater China.

O'Brien and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, both of whom have only been in their positions a few months, have already spent considerable time traversing the globe warning of the Chinese threat.

During his own speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday, Esper also warned of the spread of Huawei. And he said the United States needs to reallocate military forces and resources from Afghanistan and the Middle East to Asia.

Esper pointed to the National Defense Strategy, released last year, which cites China's "predatory economics," and calls for building up military operations in the Pacific to counter China's global ambitions and military expansion.

"China's economic rise has allowed it to triple its annual military spending since 2002, with estimates reaching close to $250 billion last year," Esper said in his speech. "Beijing continues to violate the sovereignty of Indo-Pacific nations and expand its control abroad under the pretense of 'belt-and-road' infrastructure investments."

President Trump has also raised concerns with allies about Huawei and 5G, but said there are limits to his powers of persuasion.

"Everybody I've spoken to is not going forward," Trump said last week at a summit with NATO leaders. "But how many countries can I speak to? Am I going to call up and speak to the whole world? It is a security risk, in my opinion, in our opinion. We're building it and we've started. But we're not using Huawei."

China has been willing to provide cash, resources and equipment to foreign governments in ways the United States is not. Foreign diplomats say it's difficult to turn down China when they desperately need cash for infrastructure and job-creating projects like new roads, telecommunications equipment and energy systems.

O'Brien said the Chinese government has made Huawei very attractive through subsidies. Western competitors like Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson or Cisco can't compete at the same price and still make a profit.

But O'Brien said foreign governments lured by the cheaper prices are missing the big picture.

"It's great to get a discount," O'Brien said. "It's great to get something for free. But at the end of the day, it really isn't free. There's no free lunch. And folks, our allies, need to consider the long term consequences of taking the cheap Huawei equipment now and what that's going to mean for them and their country in the long term."

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2019-12-10 10:00:00Z
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Paul Volcker, the Carter-Reagan Fed chairman who beat inflation, dies at age 92 - CNBC

President Reagan and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker meet in the Oval Office on July 16, 1981.

Bettmann | Bettmann | Getty Images

Paul Volcker, who as chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan helped tame inflation with 22% interest rates that also crunched American manufacturing, farming, and real estate but led the way to two decades of expansion, has died. He was 92. He died on Sunday, according to The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Years after the Great Recession, Volcker headed President Barack Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board and pushed to create a namesake regulation, the Volcker rule, which sought to rein in commercial banks by prohibiting them from making the risky investments that helped spark the 2007 financial collapse.

The cigar-smoking Volcker, who stood 6-foot-7 and was known as "Tall Paul," was appointed Fed chairman by Carter in August 1979, was renominated by Reagan in 1983 and served until 1987. Even before his 1979 nomination, he had a reputation as an inflation buster.

"In terms of economic stability in the future, that [inflation] is what is likely to give us the most problems and create the biggest recession," Volcker said in a 1979 Fed Open Markets Committee meeting months before he became the central bank's chairman.

The inflation rate was 1% under President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 but ballooned to a breakneck 14.8% in March 1980. To combat the price rises, Volcker's Fed jacked up the federal funds rate and tightened the money supply. The rate, used by banks and credit unions for overnight loans to other depository institutions, reached a record 22.36% in July 1981. (By comparison, it was zero to 0.25% from December 2008 to December 2015, during the financial crisis and its aftermath.) Shortly after becoming Fed chairman, Volcker raised the discount rate by 0.5%, which would be considered a sizable jolt today.

Paul Volcker, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Peter Foley | Bloomberg | Getty Images

One of his big concerns was to change the expectations, and hence the actions, of people who believed prices would continue to rise rapidly.

"We are dealing with an inflationary momentum, and patterns of thinking and behavior, that have developed over decades," Volcker told the National Press Club in September 1981. "Something like half the working population — those under age 35 — have never known price stability in their working experience. ... We have become accustomed to living with inflation, adjusting to it — and anticipating more. And as we have done so, we unwittingly set in motion forces that have kept it going."

Within two years of the Fed's peak interest rate, inflation fell below 3%, ending the period dubbed the Great Inflation.

Still, the high interest rates had their stifling effects. The economy plunged into recession. Before the 2007-09 bust, the 1981-82 recession had been the worst economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate in 1982 hit 10.8% — more than 1 in 10 would-be workers — still the highest since 1940.

Volcker was vilified. A trade publication, the Tennessee Professional Builder, published a "wanted" poster of Volcker in early 1982 and accused him and the Fed of "premeditated and cold-blooded murder of millions of small businesses."

"Without his bold change in monetary policy and his determination to stick with it through several painful years, the U.S. economy would have continued its downward spiral," William Poole, former president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, wrote in a 2005 tribute. "By reversing the misguided policies of his predecessors, Volcker set the table for the long economic expansions of the 1980s and 1990s."

Paul Volcker speaks while President Barack Obama listens before he signed an executive order establishing the Economic Recovery Advisory Board on Feb. 6, 2009, in Washington, DC.

Mark Wilson | Getty Images

Paul Adolph Volcker Jr. was born in Cape May, New Jersey, on Sept. 5, 1927, and grew up in Teaneck, where his father was the manager of the leafy northern Jersey suburb. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in 1949, later received a master's degree in political economy from Harvard and became an economist at the New York Federal Reserve in 1952. He went on to work at Chase Manhattan Bank and the Treasury Department, where he served as President Richard Nixon's undersecretary of the Treasury for international monetary affairs from 1969 to 1974.

With unemployment and inflation growing and demand for the dollar weakening, the economy was in crisis mode in 1971. Volcker was among the White House economic advisors, including Fed Chairman Arthur Burns and Treasury Secretary John Connally, who created the "Nixon shock" policies. First, they unilaterally canceled the direct international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold — effectively ending the post-war Bretton Woods system of fixed currency exchange rates — and then imposed a 90-day freeze on wages and prices to check inflation, the first such non-wartime controls.

Volcker left the Treasury in 1974 and became a senior fellow at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. Almost exactly a year after Nixon resigned as president in August 1974, Volcker returned to the central bank as president of the New York Fed, where he advocated monetary restraint.

Volcker's concern about inflation had a lasting impact on the central bank. Monitoring rising prices is one of the Fed's dual mandates, along with employment trends, in taking the pulse of the economy and setting interest rates.

After his inflation-busting days at the Fed, Volcker became chairman of the Wolfensohn & Co. investment firm. In 1996, he led a commission that investigated dormant Swiss bank accounts of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. His work led to a settlement of $1.25 billion.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, he led Obama's economic recovery board from 2009 to 2011. He was critical of financial institutions' roles in bringing on the 2008 economic meltdown and called for limiting the size of the nation's biggest banks. As such, he was instrumental in the creation of the Volcker rule, part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The rule sought to prevent commercial banks from using their own funds to invest in derivatives, hedge funds, and private-equity firms.

Volcker wrote nine books, including "Keeping At It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government," a memoir published in October 2018 — when he was 91.

"I had no intention of writing a book, but there was something that kind of was irritating me," he told The New York Times columnist and CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin at the time. "I'm really worried about this governance thing."

Referring to the state of the nation, he added: "We're in a hell of a mess in every direction."

Survivors include his wife, Anke Dening, and two children from his first marriage to Barbara Bahnson, who died in 1998.

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2019-12-09 14:03:00Z
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Celadon Group makes bankruptcy official, shuts down after 34 years - FreightWaves

This morning, Celadon Group (OTC: CGIP) executives told its employees that the company filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 and will shut down the operations of its over-the-road fleet. The official announcement came after a chaotic weekend of credit, customer, and driver issues when word got out about Celadon’s impending Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. 

Employees were instructed to come to a meeting at the corporate headquarters in Indianapolis to be held this morning. But then in the middle of the night, fleet-wide messages went out to drivers’ telematics devices:

Competitors of the troubled carriers started aggressively posting offers for assistance and interest in hiring as news broke over the weekend. For many, a new career will start off on a sad note, but many were optimistic about the opportunities and new beginnings.

For office and professional staff at company headquarters, the struggle will be bigger to find equivalent opportunities. Many of the employees had spent decades working at the company and will be forced to look in other industries. Celadon was the largest trucking company based in Indiana, with no equivalent competitor in the area. As such, finding an employer or group of employers that can absorb the size of the truckload administrative workforce will be difficult. 

While Celadon’s demise took many years to play out, its final stages could be described as chaotic. 

Last Thursday, December 5, rumors swirled as lenders began repossessing equipment from Celadon. The next day, internal sources at Celadon told FreightWaves about the planned filing. On Friday Celadon also began advising its largest customers to find other transportation providers, but did not inform its own employees about the expected bankruptcy or shutdown. Customer service and driver managers found out from customers and drivers that the company was in trouble on Friday night, but lacked context. While management had informed shipper customers, they failed to inform internal staff. 

FreightWaves received notice late Friday from a person not affiliated with the company that FedEx and other accounts had cut the company off. Other shippers, including Walmart, MillerCoors and Conagra also started to cancel pre-planned loads.  In some cases, Celadon drop trailers with freight pre-loaded at shipper locations were unloaded and the freight given to other carriers.

When shippers started to cancel loads that were pre-booked late Friday, the jig was up. It became apparent inside of headquarters that the rumors had some teeth to them and questions started to be asked.

Over the weekend, Comdata shut off fuel cards, briefly re-activated them and then cut them again. FreightWaves heard reports from other carriers’ drivers who witnessed Celadon trucks being repossessed and towed away from truck stops. 

The lack of communication from company leadership contributed to the confusion over the weekend. Some drivers were apparently told to get out of their trucks; others were told to finish their loads. Meanwhile, rival carriers offered jobs, transportation, and legal advice to stranded Celadon drivers. 

Drivers, dispatchers, and office workers traded rumors, expressed their feelings, and asked for help on social media during the weekend.

One Celadon driver who was stuck in Laredo spoke to FreightWaves about his plan to leave the company but preferred not to be identified.

“I loved working for Celadon,” the driver said. “They treated me with respect. I wanted to stick around with Celadon, but I have a wife and kid back in Florida and I got to do what is best for my family.”

This is a developing story. FreightWaves will have more news on the Celadon shutdown on FreightWaves.com and FreightWaves TV. Download the FreightWaves TV app for iPhones or Android. FreightWaves TV is also streaming on AppleTV and Roku.

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2019-12-09 12:12:13Z
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Sanofi to acquire Synthorx for $2.5 billion - MarketWatch

Sanofi SA said Monday that it will acquire biotechnology company Synthorx Inc. for an aggregated equity value of around $2.5 billion.

The French pharmaceutical company SAN, -0.50% SNY, -0.11%  said it plans to take control of all outstanding shares of Synthorx THOR, +0.20%  for $68 per share in cash.

The acquisition of Synthorx, which is expected to close in the first quarter next year, will strengthen Sanofi’s existing immuno-oncology portfolio, it said.

The takeover is “aligned with our goal to build our oncology franchise with potentially practice-changing medicines and novel combinations,” Sanofi’s Chief Executive Paul Hudson said.

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2019-12-09 09:07:00Z
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