The entire purpose of China’s presumed rebalancing act is supposedly that the country’s economy will no longer be strongly linked to industry. Manufacturing, for export in particular, is what made modern China into an economic powerhouse, transforming a once agrarian subsistence society (thanks to socialism). One need only look at overhead or satellite images of those cities chosen as special [...]
Argentina has had a good month of July. When last we checked toward the end of June, the peso was still plummeting. It would nearly close below 29, an absolutely astounding drop that made plain this wasn’t devaluation as “stimulus.” That plus the whole record IMF bailout and the immediate dollar funding that came with it. That was June 7, [...]
With the switch to the 2012 reference, the new fixed dollar comparison makes revisions in the PCE Deflator a bit springier. Lows are a little lower; highs a little higher. At the bottom in 2009 (July), for example, the 2009 reference says consumer price inflation was -1.18%. This new 2012 reference says it was -1.24%. For June 2009, the difference [...]
I wrote back in August 2016 out of frustration. There were any number of topics to have become flustered over at the time, but on this particular occasion it was the personal savings rate. Because it is, like productivity, essentially a plug in between two statistics whenever those two particular series, income and spending, are subjected to revision it can [...]
There are two components to economic demand: willingness and ability. The two factors work only in tandem. We all want to buy our own private islands stocked with the most obscene amenities yet invented, but none of us are able to put together the down payment for such an insane venture. The demand for ultra-wealthy living is high in fantasy, [...]
There is a huge difference between believing in gold and believing in the gold business. The former is about wanting a stable, dependable global monetary system, one very much like what survived thousands of years of history without a whole lot of changes to it. The latter is about convincing you who are likely to believe the same thing to [...]
This is one of those time where so much has happened that in the end it amounts to so very little. The latest GDP estimates included a sharp rise in the current estimates, a reworking of past estimates that seemed to have made the economy much richer, but behind all that the same economic picture as before. As most people [...]
BNP Paribas is apparently calling for an epic rout in German bunds. According to Bloomberg (who else?) it’s a mini-revival of Bill Gross’ ill-fated tweet advertising the “short of a lifetime.” In April 2015, the man many called the bond king said it was going to be better than the pound in 1993. https://twitter.com/JHIAdvisorsUS/status/590519759797530624 Gross advertised waiting until later in [...]
We are closing in on a record for economic expansion. It’s been talked about more frequently, especially since one has already been reached in the labor market. According to the BLS, there hasn’t been a negative employment report since September 2010 (there was one in September last year, but it has since been revised to slightly positive). That’s 93 consecutive [...]
One soft indication of how far things have gone is Bloomberg. Six or eight months ago, its newsfeed was filled with uniformly apocalyptic hyperbole over inflation. The tight labor market, according to the Federal Reserve, was going to lead to a faster and farther rate trajectory. Sparked by quickening confidence in the short part of the curve, there was just [...]
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