[读书学习] 苹果CEO今天给FED主席耶伦的忠告！It really is the money, honey.

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Apple’s Tim Cook could give the Fed’s Janet Yellen some good advice today

Published: Jan 27, 2016 12:49 p.m. ET

         
To wit: The dollar is the real threat to the U.S. economy
By
TIM
MULLANEY
WRITER
Reuters
Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook

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It really is the money, honey.

Wall Street is in its quarterly ritual of trying to figure out what Apple’s earnings report means — and, in the terms that matter most, the 4% drop in Apple’s AAPL, -4.71%  stock Wednesday says they are not buying CEO Tim Cook’s explanation that the soaring dollar killed their quarter.

But they should. And of all the people who should listen up, Janet Yellen & Co. should be near the top of the list.

The Street is upset that Apple’s revenue rose only 1.7%, though it would have risen 8% without currency changes that Cook said (on the post-earnings conference call) shaved an average $49 off the cost of an iPhone, bringing its price down to $691. Investors are also upset that the company is projecting current-quarter sales will drop for the first time since 2003, hurt by the stronger U.S. currency.

Apple has the same strengths it ever had — and one more weakness, which is the U.S. currency.
You need only one number to shoot down, at least tentatively, the fears being expressed that this is the end of an era, that the smartphone market is saturated and Apple may never grow again.

It is this: Two years ago, when Apple also faced a Christmas quarter without a new iPhone and also without the currency challenges it faces now, its sales rose 6%. As in, two points less than they just rose in constant-currency terms.

There are two thoughts here, one about Apple and one about the Fed.

For Apple, all is not lost. The numbers suggest strongly that when the next iPhone cycle comes, consumers around the world will await it just about as eagerly as they ever have. They’re taking more market share from Android than ever, Cook said. The middle class is still exploding in China and India — and, as bad as the markets think China is doing, retail sales there were up about 11% in 2015 and Apple’s sales to mainland China rose 18% last quarter. The weakness that has shown up this month is most notable in Hong Kong, Cook said.

Apple has the same strengths it ever had — and one more weakness, which is the U.S. currency. It still needs the next blockbuster product, whether it’s going to be the autonomous car, the Apple Watch or a portfolio of higher-margin services businesses, from Apple Pay to the App Store, that makes Apple less hardware-dependent. But until one of those happens, Apple looks like a huge company that grows in the high single digits, ex-currency, in years when it doesn’t have a new iPhone and — until events prove differently — will grow significantly faster in years when it does.

Apple posts slowest iPhone growth, sees revenue falling(1:49)
And which trades at about six times earnings, net of its $39 a share in cash. That’s $216 billion in cash, or the GDP of something between Qatar and Portugal.

For Yellen, the trick is to understand that the strong dollar stems, in part, from the promise of higher U.S. interest rates — and that means the main way to help the U.S. economy now is not to push the dollar higher by raising rates again.

No one really expects Yellen to do that at the meeting of the Fed’s policy makers that ends Wednesday — but Fed members have been hinting in public that they might raise rates as many as four times this year.

Seriously, don’t. Apple is one thing. But add currency-related weakness for Caterpillar CAT, -0.08% Alcoa AA, +0.35% and maybe even Boeing BA, -7.56% which didn’t explicitly blame currency or emerging-market weakness for cutting its 2016 forecast but which operates just as globally as the others. Combined, they’re another thing entirely.

Export weakness in general, along with slower inventory investment, is expected to reduce 2016 growth in the U.S. by 0.8 percentage point, more than a quarter of the 3.1% growth in private domestic demand, which excludes those factors, Regions Financial chief economist Richard Moody said.

That could be defended, especially in a U.S economy near full employment, if the Fed were not so utterly lacking in any real reason to raise rates. There’s just no inflation threat anywhere, and no need to raise U.S. rates to head off price hikes — prices for goods are actually falling in the U.S.

Like it or not, the Fed is the world’s central bank. With other currencies plummeting against the dollar in a way that is hurting U.S. companies, the Fed needs to stop raising rates as other central banks are cutting theirs. Or there will be a harvest of more sour Apples.