The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has revised its preliminary estimate of GDP. That can only mean one thing: time to look at corporate profits again. Included along with the recalculated headline output estimate is the BEA’s first run of profit figures. If you are Jay Powell, you aren’t going to like what you find. First, real GDP in the [...]
October 2017 continues to show up as the most crucial month across a wide range of global economic data. In the mainstream telling, it should have been a very good thing, a hugely positive inflection. That was the time of true inflation hysteria around the globe, though it was always presented as a rationally-determined base case rather than the unsupported [...]
I do get a big kick out of the way Communists over in China announce how they are dealing with their enormous problems especially as they may be getting worse. Each month, for example, the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) will publish figures on retail sales or industrial production at record lows but in the opening paragraphs the text [...]
It wasn’t just the unemployment rate which was one of the key reasons why Economists and central bankers (redundant) felt confident enough to inspire 2017’s inflation hysteria. There was actually another piece to it, a bigger piece potentially complimentary and corroborative bit of conjecture. I write “conjecture” because despite how all this is presented in the media there’s very little [...]
I wrote last week what I think is a pretty good explanation for how the world has no choice but to live with the (euro)dollar as its global reserve currency regime. It has little or nothing to do with how oil is priced, and while it’s sexy to talk about a petrodollar the truth is that idea never really mattered. [...]
The Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index (NAI) fell pretty sharply in October. At -0.71, that’s a reading which suggests the US economy may be operating significantly below trend. Fifty-eight of the 85 monthly indicators which make up the statistic made negative contributions. Of course, “below trend” is an imprecise term and doesn’t by itself stand up to the one question [...]
Building on the theme of midpoints, the current direction of the global economy, and the prospects for a Phase 2, the OECD provides us with another timely reminder about the way in which the global economy is developing. Not the good way. Releasing revised estimates for worldwide growth, the organization figures 2019 will be the slowest since 2009. In fact, [...]
With some PMI’s in the US on somewhat of an upswing, it already raises the issue of a midpoint in their trend. Given how the US data is pretty isolated in that way, could there also be midpoint decoupling? That’s what we would have to believe if the “bottom is in” folks have it right, those like Jay Powell who [...]
It was a huge sigh of relief, seen as confirmation of the word “transitory.” Oil prices in late 2014 had crashed and while globally monetary officials tried to reassure everyone it was a good thing, a supply glut giving consumers something like a tax cut, the wipeout was still unnerving. And that uneasy feeling was reinforced by forward-looking economic data [...]
Scarcely a week will go by without some grand prediction of the dollar being dethroned. Set aside how if anything is to be deposed it would have to be the eurodollar, these stories typically follow the same formulaic approach: Country X is moving away from dollar reserves, “diversifying” its holdings because of the geopolitics of Y. Usually, it is the [...]
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