Severe shortage of US supplies .. The global economic boom is unknown

The global economy enters uncharted territory after a decade of concerns about insufficient demand and purchasing power in the wake of the global financial crisis. Signs of insufficient supply are now emerging, and the lack of goods, services and labor means that high demand is slowly being met or not being met at all. .

In this report, the Economist , the British magazine, reported that there is evidence to suggest that supply bottlenecks could lead to unpleasant surprises that could impede the post-pandemic economic recovery. Read also President of the US Central Bank: Cyber ​​crime is a major threat to the global economy Despite OPEC decisions, global oil stocks are still higher than required Affected by wars and economic problems … the food crisis is ringing the alarm in the Arab world Why is the Corona crisis in India hindering the growth of the global economy?

Nowhere is supply shortages more severe than in the United States, where a boom is underway, and consumer spending is growing at more than 10% at an annual rate, while people have spent more than $ 2 trillion in additional savings accumulated in the past year.

The magazine explained that the boom creates two types of bottlenecks, the first of which is related to supply chains, where there has been a shortage of everything from wood to semiconductors, the cost of shipping goods from China to the United States has tripled, and companies have not reported delays from suppliers in such a severe way for decades. .

The second type of bottleneck appears in the labor markets. Last April, the United States created only 266,000 jobs. However, vacancies reached their highest levels ever.

Today, firms are struggling to fill those jobs, and economists argue over whether generous unemployment benefits give people a reason not to look for work, and it will take time for labor to move from dying to developing industries.

With demand rising in exchange for shortage of supply, inflation has come into the spotlight. In April, US consumer prices rose 4.2% year-on-year, compared to 2.6% in March.

This partly reflects the fundamental impacts (oil prices are as high as they were in 2019, but 272% higher than they were in April 2020). This also reflects a real fundamental increase in world prices, and factory delivery prices in China are rising at the fastest rate in more than 3 years. Years.

Central banks insist that the maximum stimulus must continue for fear of jeopardizing the nascent recovery, and in this regard, Lyle Brainard, a member of the Federal Reserve, said the rise in inflation as the economy reopens will be largely temporary.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell sees no cause for concern. The Fed will bear inflation somewhat above target for some time, partly because it expects prices to fall soon, and so do many forecasters.

But this approach carries a number of risks, the first of which is that inflation is slowly fading away, as supply bottlenecks in the early stage of the epidemic in 2020 quickly disappeared, but there is no guarantee that this will happen now. Inflation expectations may also rise if people think that central banks will act slowly and too late.

 interest rates

Many companies are now discussing inflation with their investors, and bond market traders believe that the Fed will have to act sooner than it wants, and in fact, former governor Bill Dudley, fears the Fed will have to raise interest rates to 4.5% to make the economy easier. Stabilizes.

This indicates the risk of sharp interest rate hikes destabilizing the markets, the magazine reported, and so far, the main event has been the massive sell-off of tech stocks, which is manageable.