Liam Dann: Recession to the rescue! Why we're cheering on the villain

At the movies, it's often fun to cheer for the bad guys. Photo / Supplied

OPINION:

Things probably aren't as bad as they seem.

But that's ok because if they seem bad that might be a good thing. It might even mean things don't actually get too bad.

It's a strange old time.

At the movies, it's often fun to cheer for the bad guys.

It feels like we're doing that in the world of economics right now.

Weirdly, hopes of beating inflation and getting the global economy back into balance now rest on recessionary forces getting the upper hand.

Bad news has effectively become good news for a while.

Recessionary gloom on world markets knocked 10 per cent off the price of oil last week.

That's a good thing.

Other commodities also fell sharply as traders anticipated falling consumer and business demand in the next few months.

That grim sentiment also saw mortgage rates fall and stockmarkets rebound.

It was all oddly heartening. The world is taking its monetary policy medicine and there are signs it's starting to work.

It's fair to say this is a highly precarious balancing act.

This is a controlled burn-off of economic demand by central banks. We're only ever a gust of economic ill-wind away from burning down the house - or causing an actual recession.

No one likes an actual recession.

Like the movies, where the "idea" of a bad guy is a lot more fun than a real bad, the idea of a recession is less painful than a real one.

Right now the idea of recession has definitely taken hold.

Normally that's bad news. We'd be worried about unnecessarily talking ourselves into a real recession.

A feedback loop of gloomy business and consumer surveys starts to create negative media headlines and commentary.

That prompts people to pull back on their spending, causing more negative data and gloomy headlines and so on ...

Perception shapes reality. In fact, there are philosophers who'll argue that any distinction is arbitrary.

The economy is just the sum total of our economic behaviour and how we behave is based on how we feel.

But the reality is that humans aren't always very good at understanding what's going on with our own brains - let alone the rest of the world.

ANZ isn't buying into the extent of consumer gloom. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

Perhaps right now - in these tough pandemic years - we're particularly bad at it.

ANZ economists took a deeper look at consumer confidence last week.

They concluded that, at face value, consumer confidence is so low we should already be in a serious recession.

But things aren't that bad yet.

That suggests there are reasons to be sceptical about the depth of consumer gloom.

We're all sick, tired and beat-up after two-and-a-half years of Covid. Inflation is making us feel poorer.

It's likely that we are overly prone to worry about the immediate outlook even though the reality - for anyone with a house and a job at least - is that we're still in a strong economic position.

That's borne out by actual spending data. Kiwibank's latest Household Spending tracker - released Friday - showed electronic card spending rebounded in the June quarter, rising 7.1 per cent.

Entertainment spending rose 61 per cent over the June quarter.

"Despite Covid still being in the community, we're learning to live with the virus," said Kiwibank chief economist Jarrod Kerr.

It sounds like some of us have been having a good time!

ANZ doesn't buy the extent of the consumer gloom, either - sticking to forecasts that see our economy avoiding recession in the foreseeable future.

But it does see the sentiment exerting some recessionary pressure.

"The pessimism we're seeing in consumers is a key reason for our expectation that, after a fourth 50bp hike in August, the RBNZ will return to 25bp hikes, and will then pause hiking after November's MPS (with a peak OCR of 3.5 per cent)," said economist Finn Robinson.

A peak for interest rates is in sight. That's absolutely good news coming at us through the gloom.

This wrestling match between upbeat inflationary news and gloomy deflationary news is going to swing back and forth for a while, I suspect.

If we start to cheer up too soon then we could reignite inflation pressure.

That's why you can expect central banks - including our own Reserve Bank - to stay focused on hiking rates into the downturn.

They need to be really sure it's peaked before they pause.

In a complete turnaround from the situation two years ago, that's where the "path of least regrets" now lies.

That might mean we do end up in a technical recession.

Although, ironically, by the time we get there, people will probably be feeling more optimistic.

For some reason, we tend to worry more about the future than the present.

And GDP itself is a high-level measure of economic activity that doesn't always match our individual experience.

Not the way that inflation does. Or losing our job.

The risk that central banks hike rates too far and we get stuck in a more serious downturn is ever-present.

But with global supply-side inflation starting to ease, that looks less likely now.

We've moved on to dealing with the part of the inflation equation that we actually have the tools to fight.

Just don't start celebrating yet. A booming economy full of happy consumers is the last thing we need.

It's messed up topsy-turvey old economy alright.