The Federal Reserve published its latest update for Z1, the Financial Accounts of the United States (formerly Flow of Funds). That means we can update our valuation metrics for a good piece of the US stock market. Tobin’s Q starts with the premise that the value of any company is in many ways dictated by its accounting net worth. We [...]
It’s amazing how in a world of supposedly separate, closed economies they all seem to congregate anyway toward the same events. In early 2000, the US dot-com bubble ran into its own contradictions, the rationalizations holding it together no longer so tempting to what was for years insatiable investor appetite. Not even a year later, a mild recession began. What [...]
Whenever a big bank is rumored to be in unexpected merger talks, that’s always a good sign, right? The name Deutsche Bank keeps popping up as it has for several years now, this is merely representative of what’s wrong inside of a global system that can’t ever get fixed. In this one case, we have a couple of perpetuated conventional [...]
US consumers continue to recover from their debt splurge at the end of last year. Combined with still weaker income growth, the Federal Reserve estimates that aggregate revolving credit balances grew only marginally for the fourth straight month in April 2018. To put it in perspective, the total for revolving credit (seasonally adjusted) is up a mere $2.2 billion for [...]
Auto sales improved only slightly in May 2018 from more dismal results over the prior few months. Unit and retail sales were projected to be +3.5% year-over-year last month. Almost immediately, these numbers (really just the plus sign) were celebrated as clear evidence that consumers were spending in true boom fashion. Encouraged by a strong job market and vibrant housing [...]
US trade is further leveling off after several months of artificial intrusions. On the import side, in particular, first was a very large and obvious boost following last year’s big hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. Starting in September 2017, for four months the value of imported goods jumped by an enormous 8.3% (revised, seasonally-adjusted). Most of the bump related to [...]
Back in 2011 and 2012, apple growers in the state of Washington got the government there to declare an emergency. They were expecting a record or near-record crop of fruit but they just couldn’t find enough workers to harvest it all. Faced with a potentially devastating labor shortage, Washington’s governor turned to convicts. I wrote about it in 2013 and [...]
I ended my last piece on Brazil's depressing state with the following: And the media in the developed world will dismiss all of this as Brazil being Brazil, South America’s basket case reverting to type. The siren song of globally synchronized growth has gripped all commentary, and they aren’t about to let it go now. Certainly not for the other [...]
A recent poll in Brazil showed that one-third of Brazilians favor “military intervention.” The country had been gripped by a crippling trucker’s strike, the results of which have been almost complete economic shutdown. Intervention, as it is softly termed, would be nothing less than a coup. The direct cause of the strike is quite simple. Under former President Dilma Rousseff, [...]
In the last update I wondered if growth expectations - and growth - were breaking out to the upside. 10 year Treasury yields were well over the 3% threshold that seemed so ominous and TIPS yields were nearing 1%, a level not seen since early 2011. It looked like we might finally move to a new higher level of growth. [...]
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