It’s one thing if China registers a low ceiling or Brazil. That wasn’t going to be possible this time in the developed world. Europe and the US were finally going to lead. That’s what they said last year, anyway. Markets are freaking out about the growing evidence for so many growth ceilings. The other term for it is an “L” [...]
Jerome Powell may be hawkish, relatively speaking, but his case rests on one data point alone. There is nothing other than the unemployment right now indicating he’s got the right forecast in mind. This wasn’t true just months ago. At the end of 2017 and for a few months in 2018, inflation was moving upward and above targets and benchmarks. [...]
We will hear all day and for the next month (at least) about the two best quarters of GDP growth in four years. Somehow this will be used to justify calling this an economic boom, even though those two quarters in 2014 supposedly didn’t qualify. And they were better quarters, at least so far as real GDP goes. Knee-jerk reactions [...]
The manufacturing renaissance at the base of this supposed US economic is disappearing. It is unsurprising, quite predictable actually. First, there was the cleanup from last year’s major storms and then frontrunning potential trade restrictions. Manufacturers domestically were gearing up for a whole host of non-economic reasons. If Keynes had ever been right about activity for the sake of activity, [...]
Many attribute the saying “a rising tide lifts all boats” to President John Kennedy. He may have been the man who brought it into the mainstream but as his former speechwriter Ted Sorenson long ago admitted it didn’t originate from his or the President’s imagination. Instead, according to Sorenson, it was a phrase borrowed from the New England Chamber of [...]
I'll just repost what I wrote about a week after the "technical adjustment" in June. How bereft of ideas might they have to be to fall back on IOER? It’s scandalous, really. But the Federal Reserve in terms of intellectual property belongs on the TV program Hoarders. They never throw anything away, so attached do they become to whatever ineffective idea implemented [...]
The housing slump accelerated in September. Matching the poor performance of resales, sales of newly constructed houses tumbled last month, too. According to the Census Bureau, there were 41k (unadjusted) single-family units sold. That’s down an alarming 18% from the same month last year. At a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 553k in September, the construction market is down for now [...]
True to form, whoever holds the government it is for them the best economy ever. It doesn’t matter political parties or otherwise affiliations. The rhetoric has become so unhinged that in the US former President Obama is trying to take credit for current President Trump’s economic “miracle” – that doesn’t actually exist. In India, the Modi government is following the [...]
For days after China shocked the world in August 2015, “devaluing” its currency seemingly out of nowhere, there was only confusion as to what had just happened. Going by nothing more than the mainstream media and economic narrative fed to it by central bankers and Economists (redundant), you wouldn’t have known anything was wrong at all. Manipulating currency for an [...]
The Bank of Canada held its benchmark overnight rate steady at its last meeting in early September. Like the Federal Reserve, Canada’s central bank has been “tightening.” The policy lever had been lifted four times starting in July 2017. It is expected that when monetary officials meet in Ottawa tomorrow they will vote for a fifth. In recent weeks, though, [...]
Stay In Touch