Off the Charts: The Most Republican States Tend to Rely More on Government Jobs

Whatever the explanation, the states whose economies are most dependent on government employment and economic activity are also the states that are most likely to vote for Republicans, who generally campaign on promises to reduce the size of government.

Consider one measure, the proportion of civilian employees in each state with government jobs, whether federal, state or local. Nationally, the proportion last month was 16 percent, the lowest figure since 2001.

But the variance among the 50 states is large. At the top of the list, with one out of four workers employed by the government, is Wyoming. At the other extreme is Pennsylvania, with just one in eight.

Wyoming is among the most Republican states, and that is part of a pattern. Of the 15 states with the highest proportion of government employment, 10 voted for Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, in last year’s presidential election. (The District of Columbia, with more than 30 percent of the employees working for the government, is not included in the list because it is not a state, but it voted for President Obama.) Of the 15 states with the lowest level of government employment, only two — Indiana and Tennessee — voted for Mr. Romney.

If only the 25 states with the lowest level of government employment had voted in the election, Mr. Obama would have won the national popular vote by a landslide margin of 7.3 percentage points, much larger than his actual margin of 3.9 percentage points. But among the other 25 states, plus the District of Columbia, Mr. Romney had a 5.2 percentage point margin and would have easily won the election.

The charts show state rankings on that and three other measures. The 15 states with the largest government involvement are at the top and the 15 with the lowest government involvement are at the bottom.

States whose names are shaded voted for Mr. Romney and dominate all four of the top lists. States that voted for Mr. Obama are not shaded, and dominate the bottom lists. It should be noted that people may work in a different state from the one in which they live and vote. The ranking based on the proportion of government employees is shown in the left column of the chart. Next to it is a ranking based on the increase or decline in total government employment since January 2009, when the number of permanent government employees peaked. Coincidentally, that was also the month that Mr. Obama took office.

The other two are based on the state gross domestic product numbers calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Commerce Department. One shows the proportion resulting from government activity, rather than private sector activity, in 2012, the most recent figure available. The next shows how much real government G.D.P. increased — or decreased — in the two years from 2010 to 2012.

A complete list of the figures for all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, can be found online at nytimes.com/businessday.

The state G.D.P. figures may well understate the importance of — and the decline in — government activity. That is because they are computed differently from the national G.D.P. number. The national number is based on spending, while the state numbers are based on profits and income of workers. As a result, if a government pays for the construction of something, whether a school or a fighter jet, that will show up as government activity in the national figure. But for the state figures, it will show up as private-sector activity because the work was done by employees of construction or aerospace companies.

By the state figures, real government G.D.P. across the country fell by 3.3 percent during the two years through 2012. The national G.D.P. figures, which reflect a substantial decline in local and state government investments in such things as schools and highways, showed a 4.2 percent decline, the largest for any two-year period since the early 1950s, when the government was demobilizing after the Korean War.

Whether measured by G.D.P. or jobs, the last several years have been marked by an extraordinary reduction in government in most parts of the country.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: Investors in Europe See a Glass Half Full and Rising

Or at least investors seem to believe they are.

A survey of investor sentiment in the euro zone this month moved into positive territory for the first time since the summer of 2011. European stocks have been rising for more than a year, with bank stocks leading the way. The yields on Spanish and Italian government bonds — which were more than five percentage points higher than German bonds’ last summer — now have spreads half that level.

It was last summer that the European Central Bank took steps to get needed cash into the hands of banks, ending the immediate fears of a collapse of the euro zone. But much remains to be done.

The German elections next weekend have delayed a lot of decisions. The widespread assumption is that Angela Merkel will remain chancellor, but it is not clear if the current coalition with the Free Democrats will be able to survive. If not, she may have to turn to the opposition Social Democrats and try to form a grand coalition.

There is also wide speculation about the health of European banks. In the summer of 2012, the European Central Bank took steps to provide low-cost loans to banks to buy bonds issued by their own governments, and some did, particularly in Italy and Spain.

When there are new stress tests next year — conducted for the first time in the same way in all countries across the euro zone — some analysts fear that banks may be forced to hold more capital if they have such bonds. Conceivably, such a requirement may lead the banks to sell such bonds, driving prices down and yields up and damaging the confidence that has been growing.

But none of that has so far held back investor enthusiasm. An index of European bank stocks, shown in the accompanying chart, is up by almost half since the end of 2011, although it remains more than 60 percent below its 2007 peak.

The Sentix measure of investor confidence in the euro countries climbed into positive territory this month for the first time since 2011, and it did so largely because of optimism for the future. The measure is based on questions asked of investors, and it now finds institutional investors more confident than retail investors.

Sentiment regarding current conditions has risen, but it is still negative, according to the survey. But when investors were asked about conditions six months from now, the level of optimism has risen to the highest level since the spring of 2006, well before the recession.

It may be noted that all this enthusiasm has come despite continuing declines in gross domestic product in many countries in the zone, and despite high levels of unemployment. To some extent, it no doubt both reflects the improvements in the stock and bond markets and is a cause of them.

Does all this show foolish complacency? Or does it reflect an awareness that the worst is over for the peripheral countries in the euro zone, with recovery on the horizon? By next summer, we may have the answer.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 14, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the German party that formed a coalition with the Christian Democrats, Angela Merkel’s party. The coalition is with the Free Democrats, not the Liberal Democrats.

Off the Charts: Now It’s the Developed Nations’ Turn to Grow

During and after the Great Recession, developed economies tended to fare worse than emerging ones, and that was shown in the amount of business going to manufacturers and service companies in various countries around the globe. But in the last few months, that tide has turned. Companies in developed countries are more likely to be reporting growing business than are companies in emerging markets.

The accompanying charts look at trends in the most prominent developing countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called BRICS — and four major developed regions, the United States, Britain, the euro zone and Japan.

They are based on the monthly surveys of companies taken by the Institute for Supply Management in the United States and by Markit in many other countries around the world. The surveys ask whether business is improving or getting worse, both over all and in a number of specific areas. The charts focus on the question of whether new orders are increasing or decreasing.

In each case, a figure above 50 shows that more companies are reporting rising orders than are reporting falling orders, and the higher the number, the broader the rising order trend. Similarly, figures below 50 indicate that a plurality of companies sees orders declining. Figures above 60 show widespread growth in orders.

For the first time in more than two years, the four developed regions shown in the graphic all reported rising orders for both manufacturing and service economies in August. There was still growth in some emerging markets, but Indian and Brazilian manufacturers reported falling orders in both July and August. The last period when both of those countries reported declines was March 2009, at the bottom of the worldwide credit crisis.

A simple way to compare the two groups is to average the four reported figures for developed countries and compare it to the average for the four emerging markets, which is done in the bottom chart. The developed-area advantage is the highest it has been since the Great Recession began in the United States in December 2007.

It is worth emphasizing that the figures are intended to show change, not the level of new orders. A company with booming business would presumably report a decline if the boom eased a little, while a struggling company could see a small gain from a low level.

Nonetheless, it is impressive that of the eight euro zone countries where surveys are taken of manufacturing companies, only France registered a figure under the neutral number of 50 in August, and that figure, at 49.8, was the best French manufacturers had posted in more than two years. Even Greece posted a positive figure, that first time that had happened in four years. Germany’s manufacturers, which reported order declines earlier this year, are again reporting increases.

Both the United States and Britain had figures above 60 for new manufacturing orders. That had not happened since the spring of 2010, when order books were still rebounding from the credit crisis. Similarly, the slip in new business has extended to many other emerging markets. While Chinese manufacturers reported a rise in new orders in August, the first such report in four months, the countries registering declines included Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam. Their manufacturing exports run the gamut, from inexpensive clothes in Vietnam to cars and electronic products in Korea.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: Five Years After Chaos, Shares of Many Big Banks Are Still Struggling

Two weeks later, Lehman Brothers failed and a panic began. The crisis demonstrated how interconnected the world financial system had become and how vulnerable even apparently healthy banks were when their competitors began to crumble. In the weeks that followed, most large banks around the world had to be bailed out. Their share prices plummeted.

Since then, however, some big banks have performed much better than others — a difference based to a significant extent on just how well, or badly, each bank had been run in the months and years leading up to the crisis.

The accompanying charts show the performance of 25 large banks around the world. As the crisis began, each of them ranked in the top 20 in the world in at least one of three measurements — market capitalization, book value or total assets.

In the weeks and months that followed, all but one of them lost at least half of their market value, as measured in the local currency of the bank’s primary market. The exception was a Chinese bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, whose shares lost less than a third of their value.

The charts also show the performance of the Bloomberg World Bank Index, which comprises more than 140 banks and has done better than most of the large bank stocks. This was a crisis where bigger was not necessarily better, and where some of the largest banks proved to be far from adequately capitalized, notwithstanding what their books had indicated before Lehman collapsed.

This spring, the world bank index got back to within 3 percent of its level at the end of August 2008, although it has since slipped back and is now 11 percent lower. Few of the large banks shown have done as well.

But a handful of banks turned out to be profitable long-term investments that August. Shares of both JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo in the United States are now more than 40 percent higher than they were. Shares of two of the three Chinese banks shown — Bank of China and China Construction Bank — are higher now than they were five years ago, while the third is approximately unchanged. In Britain, HSBC is up about 13 percent, a much better performance than was shown by other large European banks. It did not hurt that HSBC had a significant presence in many developing countries, most of which rode out the recession reasonably well even though some have stumbled this year.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: A Surprising Reversal for Emerging Stock Markets

There have been sharp falls this month in several markets, from India to Turkey, reflecting concerns about weakening currencies. But even before those declines, emerging markets were underperforming relative to developed markets to an extent not seen since the Asian currency crisis of the late 1990s.

As can be seen in the accompanying charts, the MSCI Emerging Market Index is down more than 10 percent this year, while the world index, covering all developed markets, is up an equivalent amount.

That disparity is not caused by one or two exceptional performers. The charts list the 10 largest emerging markets, as measured by the market capitalization of their stocks. Each has lost money this year. Among the 10 largest developed countries, all but two markets are up for the year, measured in United States dollars to adjust for currency fluctuations. The exceptions are Australia and Canada, which came through the financial crisis relatively well and until recently had been prospering from exports of raw materials to emerging markets, particularly China. And both of them are up when measured in local currencies.

The use of dollar figures hurts the reported performance of some emerging markets. The South African and Malaysian markets are up a little for the year, measured in local currencies, but down when measured in dollars. In India and Brazil, the local-currency market declines are less than half as large as the dollar-based figures shown.

The Asian financial crisis, in which developing countries that had maintained fixed exchange rates were forced to abruptly devalue their currencies, turned out to have a lasting effect. Countries decided that it was critical to run balance of payments surpluses and to build up foreign currency reserves. The willingness of the United States and Europe to run large deficits helped.

That stood the developing countries in good stead when the credit crisis erupted in 2008, but afterward, it became harder for the developing countries. Srinivas Thiruvadanthai, the director of research at the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, notes that some of them, including India, Brazil and South Africa, are now running substantial deficits.

The world as a whole cannot, of course, have a surplus or deficit in its balance of payments. And last year the European Union ran its first annual surplus in more than a decade, while the deficit in the United States has declined.

After the Asian crisis, emerging markets did very well. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index, shown in the chart, outperformed the MSCI World Index in every year from 2001 through 2007. It did worse in 2008, when all markets crumbled, but again did better in 2009 and 2010 as it became clear that emerging markets had fared much better than developed economies.

For the decade from the end of 2000 through the end of 2010, the developed market index rose a scant 5 percent. The emerging markets index more than tripled during the same period. Since then, however, the developed markets have risen nearly 20 percent, while the emerging ones have fallen about the same amount.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: Jobs Recovery in Europe Is Also Painfully Slow

The decline was not large — 24,000 jobs, or 0.1 percent of the 19.3 million people out of work in May. But it was the first month in more than two years that there had been a decline.

Some, but not all, of that decline was in Germany, where unemployment has been falling even as it rose in other countries. Other euro zone countries that reported declines during the month were Austria, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. Two of the 17 countries in the zone, Estonia and Greece, have yet to report.

The accompanying charts show how the number of people unemployed has risen or fallen since March 2008, the month that overall unemployment in the euro zone hit its recent low. The charts also show the trends in two major countries outside the zone, Britain and the United States, where unemployment had bottomed out earlier. In the United States, the low was reached in October 2006, more than a year before the recession officially began.

It should be noted that the number of unemployed workers does not exactly equate to the number of people without jobs, which may be changing at a faster or slower rate. Discouraged workers who conclude they cannot get a job can drop out of the labor force, and thus not be counted. But when things begin to improve, those people can begin to search for employment and be newly counted among the unemployed.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the charts is how little improvement there has been in most of the countries shown. Germany is the striking exception to that, of course, and the number of unemployed in the United States has been falling steadily, if slowly, since 2010. On Friday, the government reported that the American unemployment rate fell to 7.4 percent in July, the lowest since December 2008. The number of people out of work in Britain fell in 2012 but has stabilized in recent months.

Among the most troubled countries in the euro zone, only in Ireland has there been a significant decline in the number of unemployed workers, although the figure remains nearly one and a half times as high as it was in 2008. In Greece, the number out of work appeared to stabilize late last year, but it began to rise again this year and was at the highest level yet in April, the last month for which data was available.

Perhaps the most extraordinary development has been in the Netherlands, where the number of unemployed workers has begun to rise rapidly after rising relatively slowly early in the credit crisis. Nonetheless, the latest unemployment rate for the Netherlands is only 6.8 percent, a figure that is lower than that of either the United States or Britain and about half the rate in Ireland.

For some countries, the reported unemployment rates remain very high. Although the number of unemployed workers in Portugal was reported to have fallen in both May and June, the unemployment rate remains at 17.4 percent, not far below the high of 17.8 percent reached in April. In neighboring Spain, two months of falling unemployment have reduced the rate by only 0.2 percentage points, to 26.3 percent. At least Spain no longer ranks as having the highest unemployment rate in the euro zone, as it did at the end of 2012. Greece, at 26.9 percent at last report, has regained that unfortunate position.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: Hints of a Corner Finally Turned in Ireland

That news hardly indicates that Ireland has come out of its long downturn, one that was brought on by a property boom backed by irresponsible lending. But the upturn in real estate prices nonetheless provided a note of cheer this week in a country whose consumers were already more optimistic — or at least less pessimistic — than they had been in years.

The Central Statistics Office reported that prices of residences in Ireland — homes and apartments — were 1.2 percent higher in June than they had been a year earlier. As can be seen from the accompanying charts, it was the first time since January 2008 that home prices rose over a 12-month period.

The recovery, such as it is, is concentrated in the Dublin region, where it appears that the huge backlog of overbuilding has finally been worked off. That is not true in some other parts of the country, where prices continue to decline.

And even with the latest increase, the index of residential prices is 50 percent below the peak level, and mortgage delinquencies continue to rise. Prices of apartments have fallen further than house prices, declining 60 percent from the peak, compared with a 48 percent decline for houses.

Before the real estate prices were reported, the KBC Ireland/ESRI Consumer Sentiment Index rose in June to the highest level since late 2007. As can be seen from the charts, which trace the two components of that index, that is largely because of an increase in the index of economic expectations, which is higher than at any time since July 2007. The index of current conditions remains in the range it has languished in for several years.

The latest increase in consumer confidence came as something of a surprise, and Austin Hughes, an analyst at KBC Bank, said it might be partly because of exceptionally good weather while the survey was being conducted. “It remains the case that Irish consumers are cautious and the improvement in sentiment is still fragile,” he said, “but the June sentiment reading is consistent with the view that the Irish economy is edging forward rather than slipping backward.” He added, “Signs of an improvement in both the jobs market and the property market of late appear to have eased consumer fears.”

The government also reported this week that 2,009 new homes were completed in the second quarter of this year, 11 more than in the same period of 2012. It was the first time since December 2006 that three-month figures showed a year-over-year gain.

But the figures still remain extremely low. For the last 12 months, 8,259 homes were finished. That is fewer than were finished in the single month of December 2006, while the property boom was at its strongest.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: Predictions on Fed Strategy That Did Not Come to Pass

While the first such program started at the height of the credit crisis in 2008, the new program came when the economy was growing, and it was subjected to immediate and withering criticism, particularly from conservatives fearful it would set off inflation and unimpressed by the Fed’s belief that action was needed to spur job growth.

A group of 43 economists, including former aides to Republican presidents and presidential candidates, published an open letter to the Fed’s chairman, Ben Bernanke, saying the program should be “reconsidered and discontinued.” The planned bond purchases “risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed’s objective of promoting employment,” the economists wrote.

The Fed did not back down, and Republican efforts to pass legislation removing the Fed’s mandate to seek full employment were not successful. The next year, the Fed moved on to what became known as Q.E.3, also known as Operation Twist, an effort to bring down long-term interest rates by purchasing longer-term Treasuries. That move was criticized by Republican leaders even before it was announced. “We have serious concerns that further intervention by the Federal Reserve could exacerbate current problems or further harm the U.S. economy,” the Congressional leadership said in a letter sent to Mr. Bernanke while the Fed was meeting.

Now, the Fed is again under attack, as officials discuss the possibility of slowing the pace of bond purchases later this year, and of possibly ending the program as early as 2014. That talk has caused interest rates to rise and led to warnings of large losses for bond investors, amid complaints that it is still too early to proclaim that the recovery has gathered strength.

Losses for bond holders are sure to happen at some point, assuming interest rates return to more normal levels, and this week’s downward revision of first-quarter economic growth may provide a warning that the Fed’s growth expectations, which are more robust than those of many economists, may be too rosy. Navigating an end to quantitative easing, whenever that becomes necessary, may yet prove to be tricky.

But as the accompanying charts indicate, the Fed’s critics of 2010 and 2011 have not proved to be prescient. Far from bringing disaster, Q.E.2 appears to have helped the economy.

It is remarkable how close many markets are now to where they were when the Fed announced the program on Nov. 3, 2010. The recent rise in 10-year Treasury bond rates has left the yield just a little lower than when the program began. The price of gold spiked to record highs in 2011 but is now down about 8 percent from its pre-Q.E.2 level.

In 2010, there were complaints from developing countries that the Fed was trying to drive down the value of the dollar, something Fed officials denied while conceding that the program could temporarily have that effect. Now the dollar index — based on the value of the American currency against six foreign currencies — has recovered all the lost ground.

Inflation has been quiet, and perhaps more important from a central bank perspective, inflationary expectations remain subdued. Such expectations can be inferred by comparing yields of inflation-protected Treasury securities to ordinary Treasuries of the same maturity. The chart shows what the markets expect inflation will be in five years.

For a time last year, the markets were expecting deflation — a far cry from the runaway inflation feared by Fed critics in 2010. Now, the expectation is for inflation of a little over 1 percent — or less than the expectation when the Q.E.2 program was begun.

The decline in unemployment since the Fed began Q.E.2 has been steady but hardly inspiring, and there are still fewer people working than there were before the credit crisis began in 2008. But consumer confidence has been rising recently and the stock market, despite some recent Fed-induced jitters, remains more than 30 percent above its level when the program began.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: Ireland’s Turnaround May Not Be So Rosy

TWO years ago, even as other troubled European economies continued to deteriorate, some economic statistics seemed to indicate that Ireland’s troubled economy had turned the corner and was growing again.

The government reported that gross national product had grown in 2010 for the first time since the country’s property bubble burst in 2008, and that its current-account balance had turned positive for the first time since 1999. A positive current-account balance was a sign that the country as a whole was already paying down its overseas debt. Since that was clearly not happening to the government’s debt, it indicated a sharp turnaround for the private sector.

Other statistics were not nearly as rosy. Unemployment was continuing to rise, and domestic demand — the total purchases by people and companies in Ireland — was continuing to fall. But the fact that Ireland’s current-account surplus had turned around when nothing similar had happened in such countries as Portugal, Spain and Greece was viewed as a clear sign of success for the country’s economic policies.

Well, maybe not.

John FitzGerald, an economist with the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, pointed out last month that a quirk in the way the statistics are computed, coupled with fears of a tax law change in Britain, had produced unrealistic increases in both the balance of payments and G.N.P. figures beginning in 2009.

The reasons are complicated, but the quirk is retained profits of multinational companies that chose to relocate their nation of incorporation to Ireland, even though they were, in fact, based in Britain. The G.N.P. and balance of payments data allocate those profits to Ireland, he said in a paper, even though “there is no profit to the Irish economy.”

The G.N.P. figure is similar to the more widely known G.D.P. — gross domestic product — but it includes profits only of Irish citizens and companies, regardless of where they were earned instead of profits of companies operating in Ireland. In an interview, Mr. FitzGerald said the Irish statistics office understands why the numbers are misleading, but feels it cannot change them under European rules. He said that European Union taxes on its member countries were based on G.N.P. numbers.

The accompanying charts show the official figures, alongside Mr. FitzGerald’s estimates of the proper ones after adjusting for the foreign-owned profits. By his estimates, the balance of payments did not turn positive until 2012, when the surplus was much smaller than the official figure. Similarly, the G.N.P. did not begin rising until last year.

The International Monetary Fund, in its review of the Irish economy published this week, said Mr. FitzGerald’s numbers appeared to be better. “This adjusted G.N.P. path appears to be more consistent with other economic indicators, most notably domestic demand, which continued to fall in 2009-12,” the I.M.F. report stated.

The I.M.F. forecasts that domestic demand will grow by 1 percent in 2014 after six consecutive years of decline.

Government spending reductions are a major part of that weakness, but so is the country’s failure to fix the financial system. Despite huge bank bailouts that nearly bankrupted the government, the I.M.F. is still worried about the capitalization of the banks and concerned that little money is available for lending.

Mortgage problems continue to grow. On Friday the Irish central bank said that 25 billion euros of home mortgages — more than 23 percent of the total outstanding — were behind on their payments at the end of March. Unemployment has declined a little, but remains above 12 percent for adults and more than double that for people under 25.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: S.&P. Has More Than Doubled Under Obama

Through Friday, more than 52 months after he took office, the index was up 105 percent during his term in office, for a compound annual gain of 18 percent.

There is, of course, more than a little good fortune in that statistic. Mr. Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, in the middle of a credit crisis that had caused prices to plunge and would cause them to keep falling for a few more weeks. It helps to start from a very low level. It also helps to have a central bank that drove short-term interest rates to zero, a step that both increased corporate profits and made bonds less attractive investments.

In fact, the United States stock market fell from record high levels this week, and world markets quavered, in part because of comments made by the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, that the Fed might be able to begin to back off from its aggressive monetary stance later this year.

Even with this week’s dip, however, the United States market has done better since early 2009 than any of the next nine largest economies in the world, as can be seen in the accompanying charts. Those charts reflect MSCI indexes, based in dollars, in each country except the United States, where the S.& P. 500 is used.

The United States market lagged many others early in the recovery. But as its economy kept growing, albeit slowly, and European economies faltered and worries grew that emerging economies might experience slower growth, the American market overtook the others.

Of the next nine — ranked on the size of the economies in 2009, only India’s market came close to the performance of the United States market since early 2009. Like the Chinese and Brazilian markets, it excelled early on but is now well below the peak it hit in 2011.

If you put your dollars into the Italian or Spanish stock markets when Mr. Obama took office, your shares would now be worth less than you paid for them. Over all, the world’s stock markets outside the United States have risen less than two-thirds as much as the American one has.

The Wall Street performance has not made Mr. Obama particularly popular among financiers. Indeed, some of the language about the president’s perceived support of socialism and hostility to capitalism during last year’s campaign was the harshest seen in any campaign since 1936, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was seeking a second term and was strongly opposed by many financiers.

By the time Mr. Roosevelt died in 1945, the S.& P. 500 was 141 percent higher than it had been when he took office. But he was in office so long that the annual rate of gain was only 7.5 percent, less than half of the rate so far for the Obama administration.

The other presidents whose term in office included a doubling in the S.& P. were Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Each served two full terms, and none came close to the average annual gain so far under Mr. Obama. Mr. Clinton’s 15.2 percent was the highest of that group. He had the good fortune to enter office when markets were relatively low and to leave just as the technology stock bubble was starting to collapse.

There is, of course, no guarantee that a market that rises will endure. Mr. Roosevelt’s record would be better if he had left after one term in office; the market was lower when he died in 1945 than it had been when he took the oath of office in 1937 for his second term.

And the president with the best stock market record in the 20th century — using the Dow Jones industrial average, whose history is longer than that of the S.& P. — is Calvin Coolidge. The Dow rose 256 percent — an annual rate of 25.5 percent — from his inauguration in 1923 until he left office in early 1929. The market went up an additional 20 percent before the crash. But by the end of 1931 all of the Coolidge gains had been lost.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: Traffic Backups as a Gauge of an Improving U.S. Economy

And while that is not good news for those facing delays, it is for the economy.

“Traffic is a great indicator of confidence on the ground,” said Bryan Mistele, the chief executive of Inrix, which compiles what it calls the Inrix Gridlock Index. “People hit the road as they return to work, and businesses ship more freight as their orders increase.” The rise in the index, he said on Friday, “shows the pulse of the economy is starting to beat faster.”

Drivers in most European countries, however, do not face the same traffic problem. With some of those economies in recession, travel times are declining.

Inrix, based in Kirkland, Wash., says it has data since 2010 on how long it takes vehicles to travel on roads in 100 metropolitan areas in the United States, as well as abroad. The data is collected from companies that monitor their fleet vehicles through GPS systems, and from cellphones and GPS devices in cars that use some mobile navigation programs.

It says it then calculates the figures for 15-minute intervals throughout the week, and is able to separate out vehicles that stop for other reasons — like a taxi picking up or discharging a passenger.

It then determines how long trips take versus how long they would take if there were no traffic to contend with, and calculates the average increase in trip length for each area, expressed as a percentage of the minimum time.

The accompanying charts show how much those delays increased, or decreased, in each month compared with the same month a year earlier. A figure above zero indicates that traffic delays are getting worse; one below zero indicates that traffic is speeding up.

For the United States as a whole, said Jim Bak, an Inrix official, “the data shows a double-dip,” plateauing in 2011 and then falling again last autumn. “We saw things improve again after the election,” he said. By improving, he means that delays are increasing.

For the United States as a whole, December was the first month since the data became available to show that delays were getting longer on a year-over-year basis. That continued in January and grew in February.

There are, of course, other reasons than the health of the economy for traffic moving faster or slower. Weather is an obvious one, but by reporting the data as monthly averages that are compared with the same month of the previous year, that is at least partly adjusted for.

In Europe, delays have recently been declining at only a slow rate in France and Britain, perhaps indicating that economic downturns in those countries are stabilizing. But the delays are all but vanishing in Italy and Spain, and have also been falling in Germany.

Honolulu, which has some of the worst traffic delays in the United States, has seen them getting worse in recent months, as have Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. But delays seem to be getting shorter in both Seattle and Washington.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy on nytimes.com/economix.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 29, 2013

An earlier version of this column misspelled the surname of an Inrix official. He is Jim Bak, not Bax.

Off the Charts: Housing, Ailing for Years, Starts to Recuperate

The housing industry made no contribution at all.

Now it appears that industry is finally starting to recover. Housing starts are rising at a rapid rate, albeit from a very low level. And last year, residential construction spending, adjusted for inflation, climbed 12 percent, after declining for a record six consecutive years.

The Census Bureau reported this week that single-family housing starts rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 618,000 in February, the highest level since June 2008, months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers turned a recession into a global credit crisis.

Over the last 12 months, 551,000 single-family units were started, and an additional 255,000 multifamily units. As is shown in the accompanying charts, that was an increase of 28 percent from the period a year earlier. Not since the early 1980s, when the economy was coming out of a double-dip recession caused in large part by soaring interest rates that made homes unaffordable, had starts risen so rapidly.

But as can also be seen from the charts, the recovery has not propelled the housing industry far. The total level of starts is still lower than at any time before the recession, and in the fourth quarter of last year, the residential construction industry accounted for only 2.6 percent of the total gross domestic product. That figure was up from the low, reached in mid-2009, of just 2.2 percent, but it was far below the 6.3 percent reached in late 2005, when the housing bubble was at its peak.

The last time housing construction contributed so little to the economy was during World War II.

In normal economic recoveries, housing construction supplies a substantial part of the growth recorded in the first year or two after the recession ends. But in this recovery, it kept shrinking. Over all, real housing spending contracted in every year from 2006 to 2011. But the 12 percent gain last year was the fastest since 1993, another period of recovery.

The building industry, devastated by the collapse of the boom, is only starting to recover. The number of new homes offered for sale peaked at 570,000 in mid-2006, as the boom was ending, and many of the homes built then took years to sell. The latest figures show that only 150,000 new homes were offered for sale in January, including houses that are planned as well as those partly or completely built. That is up only a little from the low of 142,000 reached last summer.

The number of homes being offered before construction begins has remained close to level for two years at a little more than a quarter of the peak. That is a sign that few new communities have been started, despite the rise in housing starts.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: Numbers Down, but German Mood Is Up

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Off the Charts: Risk Creeps Up in Long-Term Bonds

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Off the Charts: Industrial Production Sags, and Even Germany Is Affected

Figures reported this week showed that industrial production in the euro zone fell 2.5 percent in September from the previous month, the largest monthly decline since January 2009, during the worst part of the credit crisis. Production in Germany was off 2.1 percent.

Although the figures are seasonally adjusted, they can be volatile. But the longer-term trend was poor even before the September figures came in.

The accompanying charts show year-to-year changes in industrial production, using three-month moving averages to smooth out some volatility, among advanced economies as a group, in the euro zone and five major countries.

The Dutch government compiles industrial production figures from around the world. In August, the total for advanced economies was lower than it had been a year earlier, something that had not happened since 2009, although the three-month average, as shown in the chart, remained a little higher.

The September figures for some countries will not be out until the end of this month, but it seems likely they will show a drop as well.

“Germany has slowed because weak global demand, particularly for the major machinery that Germany exports, is creating lower demand for Germany’s exports,” wrote Greg Jensen of Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund and advisory firm. He said German companies were accumulating large inventories and their profits were suffering.

There are exceptions to the world pattern. Chinese industrial production continues to rise at a rate of more than 9 percent a year. While that is down from last year, it remains good. On Friday, the Federal Reserve reported that industrial production in the United States slipped in October by 0.4 percent, the second decline in the last three months, although the Fed said it would have been close to unchanged but for the effects of Hurricane Sandy. The annual growth rate is down to less than 3 percent.

But the declines have spread to some developing countries. Brazil’s production is running about 3 percent below that of a year earlier, and Indian production is basically flat compared with a year earlier.

It is not clear how much of the weakness in industrial production represents a real weakening of demand and how much reflects inventory issues. During the credit crisis, production fell much more rapidly than final demand, as companies found it hard to get financing and worried that their customers would be unable to pay for what was being shipped. Much of the revival in 2010 reflected pent-up demand, and some of the current slowing may simply show that depleted inventories have been replenished.

But the declines also provide an indication of continuing problems, particularly in some of the European countries most in need of a growing economy.

Greece’s industrial production was never large to begin with, but it is now lower than at any time since the figures began to be compiled in 1995, and is down about a third from its peak, set back in 2000.

Italian production appeared to recover in line with that of other countries in 2010, but has since weakened appreciably. For much of this year, it has been down more than 6 percent from the previous year. Spain’s production has fallen almost as rapidly.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: In Europe, a Repeat of the Credit Crisis

In the euro area as a whole, the amount of credit outstanding has fallen to levels lower than they were a year ago, according to figures released last week by the European Central Bank. In some countries within the euro zone, including Italy and Spain, credit is falling at a faster rate now than it did during the first crisis.

The difficulty in obtaining credit seems likely to make it even harder for the countries that have been hurt the most to recover and begin to grow again. The figures show that while the E.C.B. has relieved the immediate financial pressures on both governments and banks by making it easy for them to borrow, it has not managed to extend that easy credit to those who need money the most.

The first of the accompanying charts shows 12-month changes in the amounts of loans outstanding in the 17 countries that make up the euro zone, and the lower charts show the state of lending in several of the countries. The bolder of the two lines in each chart shows the change in outstanding loans to nonfinancial companies, while the other line shows changes in total loans to households, a figure that includes both home mortgages and consumer loans.

In the middle of the last decade, loans were growing rapidly in many countries. Interest rates had fallen sharply as markets concluded there was no good reason for rates to be much higher in one euro zone country than another. After all, the currency risk was identical in all the countries.

In Ireland and Spain, the easy credit helped to finance large housing bubbles, which then burst during the crisis. In both of those countries, the amount of outstanding loans rose at a pace above 30 percent a year at the peak of the cycle.

A falling total of loans means that on a net basis, no new loans are being issued, although banks might be relending some of the money being repaid on old loans. In some cases, particularly in Ireland, the amount of loans outstanding has plunged not because loans are being repaid but because they are being written off.

Some countries seem unaffected. In Finland, which has been among the most vocal in demanding austerity in the troubled countries, the amount of loans outstanding continues to grow at a rate of more than 5 percent a year. In Austria and Germany, loan volume is also rising, although at a slower rate.

But in Portugal, the amount of corporate loans outstanding is now lower than it was in the spring of 2008, before the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent world credit markets tumbling. In Ireland, loan totals to both companies and households have fallen to 2005 levels.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: The Dow as Election Indicator

But if all the bankers cared about was stock prices, they might be more sympathetic to the president. The stock market has done better than average during his tenure, not to mention better than during either of the two terms of his predecessor.

In the past, such a healthy stock market performance has usually been followed by a victory for the incumbent party.

The accompanying chart ranks the 28 presidential terms since 1900 on the performance of the Dow Jones industrial average — the only major stock index with a history that long — during each presidential term, and on what happened in the election that followed it. It focuses on the performance over each four-year period beginning at the end of October in each election year, giving each president credit for the performance after investors learn of his election.

By that measure, the Obama term has been well above average, with a compound annual gain through Oct. 24 of nearly 9 percent.

When the Dow has risen more than 5 percent a year, the incumbent party has retained the White House in 11 elections and lost it in only three elections. When the market fell, or rose at a rate slower than 5 percent, the incumbent party has lost the White House in eight of 13 elections.

In 18 of the previous 27 elections, the incumbent president was on the ballot, winning in 13 of the elections. Of the five losers, only George H. W. Bush in 1992 was defeated despite a good stock market performance over his term.

Both he and Taft, who lost to Wilson in 1912, might have prevailed had not third-party candidates — Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and Ross Perot in 1992 — drained votes from the incumbent. Hoover was blamed for the Depression in 1932, and had no chance of winning re-election.

The other two presidents defeated were Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter four years later. Each had presided over a difficult economy and a lagging stock market during a period when the ability of the United States to be competitive internationally was widely questioned. There are echoes of that attitude now, although it is China, rather than Japan, that is deemed to be the principal competitor.

It is not uncommon for Wall Street to campaign aggressively against a president who presided over a rising market. In 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt was denounced as a socialist, much as Mr. Obama has been this year, by Wall Streeters whose banks had been saved largely by government actions. In 1948, the stock market sold off sharply after Truman scored a stunning upset in his bid for a full term.

As can be seen from the charts, the best stock market sector over the last four years has been consumer discretionary companies — those that sell things that consumers do not absolutely need. Their success is a testament to how much the economy has recovered. Financial stocks as a group are about where they were when Mr. Obama won in 2008, but some of them remain depressed.

Among the 30 stocks now in the Dow Jones industrial average, Bank of America has been among the worst performers while United Healthcare, a health insurance company, is one of the best performers. While the health insurance bill pushed through Congress by President Obama has been denounced as a government takeover of health care, private insurance companies seem likely to be among the major beneficiaries if it is allowed to go into effect.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: Working Longer in the Developed World

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development this week released its latest figures on the proportion of people in older age groups working, showing that some European countries, whose social welfare systems had made possible early retirements, have begun to keep more people on the job.

In 2003, less than a third of German men age 60 to 64, and less than a sixth of German woman of the same age, were working. In the numbers for 2011 released this week, more than half of the men and a third of the women had jobs.

But as can be seen in the accompanying charts, it is still relatively rare for Germans over 65 to continue working.

Italy is one country that seems to have avoided change. In 2001, about 30 percent of men in their early 60s had jobs, as did 11 percent of women. A decade later, the figures were virtually identical.

Older workers in the United States have long been more likely to have jobs than their European counterparts. But since 2008, the proportion of American men in their early 60s who are working has fallen by three percentage points, to 54.7 percent, as a weak economy limited hiring. But the proportion of men with jobs in the 65 to 69 age bracket has continued to rise as men who could do so delayed retirement.

The proportion of men in their early 60s with jobs also fell in Iceland, Portugal and Turkey. In Greece, the proportion of men in their early 60s with jobs fell to 37.5 percent in 2011 from 44 percent in 2008.

In many countries, said Anne Sonnet, a senior economist at the O.E.C.D. and team leader of its older workers review, “the main problem for older workers is to be hired” for new jobs, not to keep jobs they already have. “There is almost no job mobility for older workers.”

The figures were released for the 34 countries in the O.E.C.D., which includes all the major developed countries and some countries that have developed since the organization was established half a century ago. But the group still does not include such rapidly growing countries as Brazil, India and China.

Ms. Sonnet said the recession that enveloped the world in 2008, and that seems to have returned in some European countries, was different from earlier downturns in the 1970s and 1980s in that countries did not encourage early retirements of older workers to make jobs available to younger people.

She sees longer working years as a good thing in a world where life expectancies have risen. “For the society, it is very important to work longer to avoid higher social costs from having to pay retirees for many, many years,” she said in a telephone interview.

There remains a large diversity in employment patterns, a diversity that is growing in Europe. While Germans are more likely to keep working into their 60s, their French neighbors still generally quit before they reach their 60th birthdays. In 2011, just one in five Frenchmen age 60 to 64 still held jobs, as did one in six women.

Of the 34 O.E.C.D. countries, only Hungary, with 17.9 percent of men in their early 60s holding jobs, had lower employment among men in that age range. At the other extreme, more than 70 percent of men 60 to 64 were working in Iceland, New Zealand, Chile and Japan.

In five countries — Slovakia, Belgium, Spain, France and Hungary — fewer than 10 percent of men in their late 60s had jobs, In four others — Mexico, Iceland, Chile and South Korea — more than half of those men were employed.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: I.M.F. Sees Economic Growth Faltering Worldwide

“The world economic recovery continues, but it has weakened further,” the fund’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, told a news conference in Tokyo, where the I.M.F. and World Bank were holding their annual meetings. “In advanced economies, growth is now too low to make a substantial dent in unemployment, and in major emerging markets, growth, which had been strong earlier, has also decreased.”

As can be seen in the accompanying chart, only Japan and the United States, among the large industrialized countries, are now forecast to grow more than 2 percent this year, and both are pegged to grow just 2.2 percent. The figures refer to growth for the entire year relative to the previous year, not to a comparison of the fourth quarter of each year.

In April, the I.M.F. forecast that global growth would be 3.5 percent in 2012 — the slowest rate in three years — but would rise to 4.1 percent in 2013. Now it forecasts growth of just 3.3 percent this year, and 3.6 percent in 2013.

The British economy, which in April was expected to post modest growth of 0.8 percent this year, now is expected to shrink by 0.4 percent.

Some of the sharpest cuts in the forecasts came in major developing economies; the forecast of Brazil’s growth this year was cut in half to 1.5 percent.

But Mr. Blanchard emphasized that “we do not see these developments, be it in China, India, or Brazil, as signs of a hard landing in any of these countries.” He added, “Indeed, we see positive policy measures being taken in all three countries, but the numbers suggest that these countries are going to have lower growth for some time, at least lower than some of the very high growth rates that we saw in earlier times.”

Brazil is still seen as likely to experience a rapid rebound in growth, rising to 4 percent in 2013. The fund’s World Economic Outlook praised the country for “targeted fiscal measures aimed at boosting demand in the near term” and for easing its monetary policy.

In general, the report praised central banks in developing countries for their innovative ways of easing monetary policies, like bond purchases. It said that at the moment, fiscal stimulus was likely to have a larger impact than it normally would, although the ability of countries to apply such stimulus was limited by the need to bring deficits under control over the longer term.

Growth rates are forecast to rise in most countries in 2013, but not in the United States, where it is forecast to dip to 2.1 percent, or in Japan, where the rate is expected to fall to 1.2 percent.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Off the Charts: Record Lows for Sub-Investment-Grade Bonds

Or so investors seem to think.

About $79 billion in sub-investment-grade corporate bonds were issued in the quarter that just ended, Dealogic reported this week. That was the largest amount issued in any quarter since the firm began collecting the numbers in the mid-1990s.

That came as the Federal Reserve embarked on its latest effort to keep rates — both short and long term — as low as possible in an effort to stimulate the economy.

“Investors are starved for yields,” said Martin Fridson, the chief executive of FridsonVision, a research firm. “Some people say the Fed is pushing people into more risky investments.”

Sub-investment-grade bonds are traditionally known as junk bonds to their detractors and as high-yield bonds to their buyers. Neither term may be that accurate these days. The bonds have been excellent investments over the last year, but as prices have risen, the yields have fallen to record lows.

One widely followed index of the bonds, the Bank of America Merrill Lynch High Yield Master Index II, ended September with an average effective yield of 6.6 percent. That is the lowest yield in its history, as can be seen in the accompanying charts.

Of course, 6.6 percent does not look that bad today when contrasted with rates on high-quality bonds. Ten-year Treasuries offer yields of 1.6 percent, a little less than the current inflation rate. If you buy an inflation-linked 10-year Treasury — one that will protect you if inflation gets out of hand — you will lock in a real return of negative 0.86 percent. Buy a corporate bond rated Single A — a good but not great credit rating — and you can lock in a yield of around 2.4 percent.

Such low rates have proved attractive to issuers. Sales of new investment-grade corporate bonds reached $177 billion in the quarter, Dealogic reported. That was just a little lower than the figure for the first three months of this year, although it is well below the record of $271 billion issued in the first quarter of 2009.

Such heavy issuance of corporate bonds might appear to be an indication that companies are borrowing money to invest in new plants and equipment. But many of the loans are being taken out to refinance bonds issued in earlier years at higher interest rates. Such an exchange benefits the company at the expense of investors, who may end up trading in one bond for another with a lower yield.

The public demand for junk bonds appears to be high as well. EPFR Global estimated that investors put $19.3 billion into high-yield mutual funds during the third quarter. That was the second-highest amount it had calculated, trailing only the first three months of this year.

High-yield bonds can be risky as well. Their prices plunged during the recession when there were fears that many of the companies issuing such bonds would go broke. That sent yields soaring above 20 percent for a brief period.

The current strength of high-yield bonds — investors in such bonds earned a total return of about 19 percent over the last 12 months — appears to reflect a general belief that such an economic downturn is highly unlikely anytime soon.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.