Roubini: No chance of a V-shaped recovery

The report below comes courtesy of Nouriel Roubini’s team of analysts at RGE, taking a look at some recent monetary policy trends in advanced economies. This content is excerpted from a longer piece, “Global Monetary Policy Review,” which includes in-depth analysis of when the world’s emerging markets might shift interest rate strategy. However, the longer piece is available only on a subscription basis.

“The curtain has opened on Act Two of our “Year of Two Halves”—RGE’s theme since the end of 2009—with the slowdown forecast for H2 2010 getting here a bit earlier than expected. Growth in Q2 2010 registered a very weak 1.6%, revised down from an original estimate of 2.4%—a sharp slowdown from the 3.7% of Q1. This implies much weaker growth in H1 than even bearish forecasters had expected. Moreover, most of the growth was driven by a temporary inventory adjustment; final sales grew a mediocre 1.1% in Q1 and 1.0% in Q2.

“All the tailwinds of H1 will become headwinds in H2, a shift we examine in a new RGE Analysis, available exclusively to clients. As state and local governments keep retrenching and even the federal stimulus diminishes, the fiscal stimulus will turn into a fiscal drag that will be much more pronounced in 2011 and after some of the 2001-03 tax cuts expire. The base effects from the lousy economic activity figures of 2009 are gone, temporary census hiring is finished and tax incentives—cash for clunkers, the investment tax credit, the first-time homebuyer tax credit and cash for green appliances—have all expired after “stealing” demand and growth from the future.

“As we argued in our North America Focus last week, a succession of data releases has induced a race to the bottom as other forecasters revise their estimates down to figures closer to ours. Personal consumption—70% of aggregate demand—seems off to a rocky start this quarter: Core retail sales for July showed the third decline in the last four months. In the week ending on August 21, same-store sales data released by ICSC-Goldman Sachs showed a fourth straight decline