The big news of the day had nothing to do with Janet Yellen, which was entirely appropriate given both her stance on the economy and anything she could possibly, realistically do about it (nothing). Apple reported results that were shocking in many ways, though not necessarily unexpectedly so. Last quarter, CEO Tim Cook had warned that the business had shifted. [...]
On January 16, 2009, the FOMC gathered telephonically for an emergency conference call to discuss a deal that had been struck between Bank of America and the FDIC, Federal Reserve, and US Treasury Department. There was enormous concern, quite well-founded, that had nothing been done the news of that day might have led to a place nobody wanted to go. [...]
In addition to the worrisome durable goods report (in the respect that it just continues the same contraction part of the slowdown), consumer confidence slipped suggesting that the rebound in stocks and prices of other risky assets are not striking a direct correlation. There may be a delayed effect, with “confidence” or sentiment in April still more focused on the [...]
With the housing recovery, it is perhaps because it has been much more visible and earnest that the disparity is more easily appreciated and understood. Prices have surged in some places as much as the housing mania portion of the great bubble of the 2000’s, yet that has taken place despite levels of overall activity at only fractions of that [...]
Without the assistance of an extra day as in February, durable and capital goods orders and shipments returned to the usual contraction. As is typical for this part of the slowdown, these are not huge declines but merely the continuation of contraction now stretching into a second year. Durable goods orders (ex transportation) were in March 0.23% less than March [...]
Economists will not remove themselves from seeing the economy as it “should be” rather than take it for what it is (and what that actually means). They have latched their narrative to the idea that it is you who has the perception problem no matter how isolated the “recovery” becomes. There never was much indication for a decent recovery all [...]
There has always been something off about the housing rebound from the depths of the crash. It was, of course, aided in good part by various QE’s that had the effect of skewing marginal benefits of the housing recovery to “investors” and especially institutional investors with the best, cheapest access to credit. From a cycle perspective, the great bubble ended [...]
Unilever is a rather typical multinational conglomerate trying to weather this “recovery” as best as it can. It is, of course, quite jarring to realize that any business so positioned might have to “weather” any recovery, but that is the state that they are presented with. Reporting Q1 results last week, the company improved slightly to almost 5% in underlying [...]
Japan has seemed unusually put upon by Mother Nature over the past few years, for which we can only express our sincerest sympathy. However, Japan’s most pressing problem is entirely man-made stemming from the fact that it was first among the world’s “developed” nations to have its economy subsumed by central banking. More than a quarter of a century later, [...]
The mainstream view of the unemployment statistics suggest that any weakness in the US economy, manufacturing or beyond, will be temporary and shallow because employment growth remains robust. The question is not whether the statistics suggest such a trend but rather if those accounts correspond with anything real. As noted earlier this week, even the Federal Reserve’s relatively new measure [...]
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