President Trump mentioned the unemployment rate seven times during his third State of the Union address delivered on Tuesday. It was obvious why he did (though I had expected twice that number). His reelection largely stands on where enough people believe the economy stands. He was, after all, elected four years ago to fix what had been a very real [...]
I wrote a few months ago that Germany’s factories have been the perfect example of the eurodollar squeeze. The disinflationary tendency that even central bankers can’t ignore once it shows up in the global economy as obvious headwinds. What made and still makes German industry noteworthy is the way it has unfolded and continues to unfold. The downtrend just won’t [...]
On January 14, FRBNY announced that it would continue offering its short-term liquidity operations for another month, until at least February 13. In setting the scene in order to slowly wean primary dealers from its non-repo repo program, the New York branch also declared that at its term repo window the cap would be reduced from $35 billion to $30 [...]
After a stunningly bad October and November, the Census Bureau reports US imports rebounded in December 2019 on a seasonally-adjusted basis. Having fallen below $200 billion for the first time since October 2017, total imports of goods rose to $205.8 billion in the final month of last year. However, most of that increase, two-thirds of it, was due to “industrial [...]
Gordon E. Moore had co-founded Intel and so he had unique insight into the growing computer world. The revolution required a lot more (pardon the pun) computing power, which, Moore surmised, wouldn’t be too difficult to deliver. In 1965, he had observed that innovations were leading firms like his to be able to install double the number of transistors on [...]
Rolling over in credit stats, particularly business debt, is never a good thing for an economy. As noted yesterday, in Europe it’s not definite yet but sure is pronounced. The pattern is pretty clear even if we don’t ultimately know how it will play out from here. The process of reversing is at least already happening and so we are [...]
According to Eurostat last week, Europe’s win streak reached 27 quarters in Q4 2019. If you count winning solely by the sign in front of quarterly GDP changes, then Mario Draghi handed off to Christine Lagarde an expansion just one quarter shy of seven years. It’s supposed to be impressive. Lagarde, however, begins her tenure in very much the same [...]
The ISM’s Manufacturing PMI rebounded sharply in January 2020, according to preliminary assessments. December’s figure was revised upward to 47.8 from 47.2, which had been a decade low, and that’s only where it began. The first estimate for the twenties exploded out of contraction, or what’s associated with the idea, to reach 50.8. It was the highest since last July, [...]
The boom never boomed. That’s what made the bond and money curves so flat in 2018. The data, the real economy behind the numbers, never matched the rhetoric. Even GDP. We’re in much the same position today, only starting from much weaker and worse. The rhetoric is still positive, except now it’s about a turnaround. But, and this is the [...]
The Federal Reserve added the word “symmetric” to its inflation goal for a reason. Back in May 2018 when it was made official officials made quite a big deal out of it. It was for two reasons, actually, both of them intertwined in the way Economists believe the economic system is supposed to work; and the central bank’s place in [...]
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