The NBER does not define a recession as two consecutive quarters of contracting GDP. That is the mainstream definition that largely survives as a coping mechanism to deny what might otherwise be quite apparent. That was certainly true in 2008, as only Q1 GDP declined and it wasn’t until Q4 2008 that this mythical “technical” definition was met. The NBER [...]
In yet another data point that identifies depression rather than a Great Recession, the Wall Street Journal reported last week what most people outside the economics profession had realized a long time ago. Janet Yellen likes to say that the housing market is recovering, highlighting the economic sector as one of the few bright spots left. The FOMC regularly and [...]
Industrial production declined for the eleventh consecutive month in July, down 0.5% from July 2015. Though the slope of the contraction continues to be unusually shallow, the fact that it has lasted for nearly a year now is significant particularly in the context of the “rising dollar” period. On a monthly basis, IP is up from its low in March, [...]
China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) reported a slight decline, -$3.6 billion, in foreign “reserve” assets in July. That followed a $13 billion “inflow” in June, which was the largest since early last year, maintaining the same pattern that we have observed for some time. A positive month isn’t so much an “inflow” as very likely forward operations from [...]
Back in early July, Bloomberg published a rather curious article that sounded like it was written from within the People’s Bank of China - or any other global central bank for that matter. The most prominent correlation over the past year had been CNY and everything else; or, as I wrote earlier in the year, CNY down = bad. The [...]
In June 2015, Japan’s Cabinet Office, the section of the government charged with tabulating and publishing gross domestic product estimates, revised Q1 2015 GDP significantly higher to 3.9% from its preliminary 2.7% figure. Not only was that the second straight quarter of positive growth, the acceleration indicated seemed to confirm that the Japanese economy had finally shaken off the effects [...]
With auto sales coming in exceptionally weak in the retail sales report today and given the importance of the auto sector in an otherwise awful economy, it makes sense to go further in detail to try to tease out corroboration. The Bureau of Economic Analysis provides a wealth of supplementary data on motor vehicles that it uses to construct GDP. [...]
Economists setting their expectations for China and PBOC “stimulus” should have been paying attention to retail sales; not Chinese retail sales, but American. They keep seeing a rebound that just doesn’t exist. US consumers, as the central marginal marketplace for the world economy of goods, have steadfastly refused the invitation of the unemployment rate to produce a worldwide economic resurgence. [...]
For the most part in 2016 retail sales had been better. “Better” is, of course, a relative term, and despite intentional colorization with respect to these types of economic accounts doesn’t automatically equate to “good.” Consumer spending data throughout 2015 was simply atrocious, not just on par with past recessions but among some of the worst months in the history [...]
On Wednesday, October 8, 2008, the FOMC voted for an emergency 50 bps cut in the federal funds rate, bringing it down to 1.50%. The day prior, the Fed announced that it would be buying short-term debt from businesses after suggesting the day before that it would fund up to $300 billion for “bad” assets. The Friday before that, Congress [...]
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