Last week, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda unleashed a mini-controversy with remarks he now claims were taken somewhat out of context. On March 2, speaking before Japan’s parliament, the central banker sure sounded quite confident: Right now, the members of the policy board and I think that prices will move to reach 2 percent in around fiscal 2019. So [...]
There may come a time not too much further down the road when Brexit will have been not quite forgotten but placed into a second tier of European disintegration. In that top level, if it should continue, would reside all on its own Itexit. The Italians not the Britons will goad the question of the euro, and therefore the whole [...]
For a very long time, they tried it “our” way. It isn’t working out so well for them any longer, so in one sense you can’t blame them for seeking answers elsewhere. It was a good run while it lasted. The big problem is that what “it” was wasn’t ever our way. Not really. The Chinese for decades followed not [...]
Public construction spending has rebounded since July last year on what looks to be storm-related cleanup costs. The Census Bureau unfortunately does not break down total spending by geographic region, which, obviously, would clarify whether or not this has been the case. For now, absent also estimates for Q4 state and local tax collections, we will have to be content [...]
I can’t help but wonder what the CNBC author was going to write. It’s not a sentence I ever thought I would put down, but in this case the omission might have meant something. In reporting on auto sales yesterday, the article started out with the ultimate cliffhanger: Major automakers reported lower U.S. new vehicle sales for February on Thursday [...]
What do August 2008, August 2011, and January 2016 all have in common? In pop culture or mainstream news, I’m not sure you could find any consistent link between those precise periods. Even in economics, it’s not quite as uniform. Those were all forming or beckoning downturns, but all at somewhat different stages of them. More specifically along those lines, [...]
The parallels between the last few years and those at the end of the 1990’s are striking. There was a few years ago the monetary intrusion of the “rising dollar” which at its worst seriously depressed the global economy. Oil prices crashed, as did several key currencies, and deflationary pressures that often accompany a significant downturn were manifest. Starting in [...]
Residual seasonality isn’t a residual, but it is seasonal. The concept was introduced several years ago mostly because Economists were finally being embarrassed about their meteorological predilections. It had become common, far too common, to blame snow, cold, and general wintry like conditions during the winter. Thus, something else had to be brought forward to explain why what looked like [...]
In early September 2007, just a month after the eurodollar system broke and still weeks before the FOMC would finally see the need to do something, anything, private equity firm Carlyle Group added six new “senior investment professionals” intending on making investments in global banking and insurance. The timing was, well, suspect. Among those added to the firm was Randal [...]
Back in October, we noted the likely coming of two important distortions in global economic data. The first was here at home in the form of Mother Nature. The other was over in China where Communist officials were gathering as they always do in their five-year intervals. That meant, potentially: In the US our economic data for a few months [...]
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