Economic Reports Scorecard The economic data of the last fortnight was typical for this cycle with some reports showing improvement and others the opposite; "mixed" has been the most often used adjective of this expansion. Of course, some reports are more important than others and the bad news was concentrated in an area that has consistently supported the economic bull [...]
Retail sales in September 2016 were mixed, though what I mean by that is importantly different than what it used to suggest. Before 2012, “mixed” results in accounts like retail sales indicated that there was some good, some concerning. After last year where retail sales were uniformly atrocious, “mixed” now means some components still that way, with some others just [...]
A great many asset classes have been moving almost perfectly sideways for months now. That is unusual by any standard, but more so given the circumstances of late 2016. This might be indicative of doubts, some of which are being reinforced by weakness that might be characterized as “unexpected” but really no longer is. Today’s data on Chinese exports is [...]
If you are not an economist bound by dogma, or a member of the media forbidden from using opinion of all but the finest (sounding) credentials, there is no mystery. I am as tired of writing about it as you are of reading it. The mainstream is by convention of the business cycle forced into linear extrapolations. Therefore, economic accounts [...]
The JOLTS series is, in my view, a second tier data set made so by its computational connections to the CES. The Job Openings portion I believe has proven over the past few years why it is less reliable, surging so far out of character that it is all alone in suggesting huge economic positivity that even the main BLS [...]
The US is awash in economic data that shows its economy isn’t close to matching the rhetoric of policymakers. FOMC minutes for the September policy meeting show largely what I have been writing for almost two years. Rate hikes aren’t about the economy as it is, they are about the economy that “should be”, the one that “full employment” denotes [...]
Four years ago, recession fatigue had set in as by then it was already several years into recovery even though it just didn’t seem that way. Historical experience had been uniform in business cycle symmetry; the economy comes back with same intensity and pace by which it had been knocked down. From that expectation alone the economy of 2012 should [...]
As perhaps another in a very long line of indications as to what is unholy and wrong about today in banking and finance, over the weekend it was reported in the Financial Times that Deutsche Bank had received an improper accommodation on its “stress test.” In what can only be described as a clear example of cheating, DB’s capital position [...]
The Federal Reserve’s Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI) fell back -2.2 in September. Revisions to the last few months were also downward, suggesting once again that there is no positive economic momentum this year. Apart from a positive change in July, the LMCI declined in every other month of 2016. With increasing negatives after July, it appears that any hopes [...]
You can only pick one. Going back to around July 11, the People’s Bank of China decided for whatever their reasons CNY had gone far enough and that the central bank would intervene to all over again to obtain a stable currency importantly against the dollar. This was nothing new, however, as the PBOC had interceded on several other notable [...]
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