Shaken Consumers, Banks May Stifle U.S. Growth, Extend Slowdown

In Blooomberg can we read today:

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy might be moving from the acute stage of the credit contagion to a chronic one.

Even with hundreds of billions of dollars from Washington to keep them solvent, banks facing the prospect of more loan losses may still curb new lending. Debt-laden consumers look set to rein in spending further as job cuts take their toll. And profit-pinched companies are turning cautious on investing and hiring as the rest of the world slows.

The plan the Bush administration and Congress are racing to enact is designed to alleviate the crisis in the markets rather than stimulate a sluggish economy. ``The fact that we have stepped back from the edge of the cliff doesn't mean everything is wonderful,'' says <a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search? q=Michael+Atkin&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1">Michael Atkin, head of sovereign research at Putnam Investments in Boston. ``We shouldn't forget that the economy is not in great shape.''

That puts pressure on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues to follow up their extraordinary interventions in the markets with more traditional medicine in the form of lower interest rates.

``The Fed still has more rate cuts to do,'' says John Makin, a principal at Caxton Associates LLC hedge fund in New York and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

The credit squeeze is prompting some economists to lower their forecasts for the economy. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, now expects the economy to contract next quarter and in the first quarter of 2009. That would be the first recession since 2001.

Slowing Growth

The consensus forecast calls for growth of 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter and 1.1 percent in the first quarter, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists completed Sept. 9. The economists saw a 51 percent chance of a recession in the next 12 months. For all of 2008, growth is forecast to be 1.8 percent, the slowest since 2002.

Rate cuts would help the economy in several ways. They would boost banks' profits by lowering their cost of funds, something that the $700 billion rescue package before Congress doesn't do. That might encourage them to lend more freely.

Lower borrowing costs would also aid consumers directly by easing their debt burdens. And companies would benefit because the cuts would help offset some of the higher premiums that investors are demanding on corporate bonds.

Stock-market investors responded positively to the news that Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson want to cleanse banks of bad assets and insure deposits in money-market funds. The Standard & Poor's 500 index jumped 4 percent on Sept. 19 to close the week little changed.

Reaction at the Epicenter

The reaction in the credit markets, the epicenter of the 13-month crisis, was more restrained. The cost of default protection on bonds issued by individual banks and brokers was still higher than a week earlier, even after dropping on Sept. 19.

Bankers were cautious as well. Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis, while praising the steps Washington took, shied away from declaring the crisis over.

``There's a lot of bad debt out there that still needs to get cleaned out of the system,'' he said in a speech to the National Black MBA Association in Washington Sept. 19.

Global banks have racked up more than $500 billion in losses on bad loans and investments, and more red ink is likely. Moody's Investors Service boosted its forecast for losses on subprime and prime-jumbo mortgages on Sept. 18 as delinquencies came in higher than expected.

Bank of Italy Governor Mario Draghi, who chairs the Financial Stability Forum of regulators, estimates banks must raise another $350 billion in capital to prepare for further losses and writedowns.

`Survival Mode'

``Banks are in survival mode,'' says Zandi at Moody's Economy.com. ``They're not interested in extending credit. They're interested in conserving capital.''

Consumers are particularly vulnerable to a tightening of credit. They're being squeezed by a weakening job market, with unemployment at a five-year-high of 6.1 percent last month, and a continued decline in house prices. Household debt as a percentage of net worth rose to 68 percent in the second quarter, the highest since 2002.

``American consumers need time to restore some balance to their household finances,'' Lewis said.

They're already trying. Retail-sales growth has slowed for six straight weeks, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers in New York. The council's chief economist, Michael Niemira, pared his forecast for September growth to 1.5 to 2 percent, from 2 percent previously.

Blue Christmas?

Analysts at Merrill Lynch & Co. said Sept. 18 that U.S. retailers may suffer their slowest holiday sales since 1991 as households grappling with higher food and fuel costs cut back.

``Consumers are starting to get the idea that they've got to de-leverage,'' says David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York.

Companies may also be turning more cautious. Industrial production fell in August by the most in almost three years as slower consumer spending prompted automakers to cut back. Almost half of large companies across the globe have curbed technology spending for the next year, according to Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research Inc.

Firms are feeling the pinch as earnings slow along with the economy. Third-quarter profits of the Standard & Poor's 500 companies may sink the most in seven years, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg News.

Exports Hurt

Foreign sales -- until now a major source of strength for U.S. companies -- are also hurt by the fallout from the credit crisis as the U.S. slowdown seeps abroad. Japan's government said last week that its economy, the world's second-largest, is weakening.

Dell Inc., the world's second-biggest personal-computer maker, said Aug. 28 that ``continued conservatism'' from some U.S. customers was spreading to Western Europe and Asia.

Companies are also getting hit by dearer credit. The average yield on the most actively traded investment-grade bonds fell Sept. 19 on Washington's moves to fight the crisis, yet still stood nearly 0.9 percentage point higher than a week earlier.

``The kind of spreads we're seeing'' on corporate debt were ``just inconceivable a couple of weeks ago,'' Martin Fridson, chief executive officer of Fridson Investment Advisors in New York, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview Sept. 19.

Financial conditions in the economy, as measured by a Bloomberg index that includes money-market spreads and equity prices, tightened during the last week despite the series of actions taken by the Fed and Treasury to ease the crisis.

Even after the Fed left its benchmark rate unchanged on Sept. 16, traders in futures markets still see about a 45 percent chance of a reduction before the end of the year.

``There's been a tightening of financial conditions,'' says David Hensley, director of global economic coordination at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. ``If they stay tight, a Fed easing may be in play

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