As if something out of bad dream, the economy continues to shrink. Actually, the economy has been shrunken this whole time, it is only the full recovery narrative that has shriveled as each drastic data revision blasts apart what little is left of the positivity. We are made to believe that government data providers go out into the economy and [...]
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 [...]
Orthodox economic theory assigns recession to some exogenous “shock.” Without it, an economy is supposed to grow indefinitely along its trend or potential baseline so long as NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) is maintained. As you can imagine, economists and policymakers spend most of their time on that latter part which is one reason, though more so ideology, that [...]
Anything with a positive number and the mainstream will jump. The latest was durable goods which only featured a positive number in the seasonally-adjusted series. Still, it was enough to send out the usual notices that the worst is over even for manufacturing. The U.S. manufacturing sector could be on the mend after struggling for the past year with a [...]
Durable goods orders and shipments declined much worse in December than November, ending any hope that November’s variation was anything other than simply that. Across-the-board, capital goods as well as durable goods, the numbers year-over-year were nearly flat for November, thus suggesting just how bad 2015 was overall when slightly negative seems like a huge improvement. So where capital goods [...]
Durable goods estimates were somewhat better in November than they have been in recent months. Year-over-year, orders contracted by less than 1% in the latest month after contracting more than 2.7% in each of the prior six. In September, durable goods orders (ex transportation) were down almost 5.5%. While that counts as improvement it may not count as meaningful. The [...]
Durable goods orders and shipments were estimated still consistent with the depressive environment that has “unexpectedly” lingered for the whole of 2015. Year-over-year, new orders for durable goods fell 4.13% while shipments contracted by 3.74%. That is the ninth straight decline in orders and the fourth in shipments (and five out of the last six months). The 6-month averages in [...]
Written Tuesday Oct 27 Anyone looking to buck the “dollar’s” direction in September has been sorely disappointed by almost every single data point so far. The latest is durable goods which was even more ugly across-the-board than August – and that includes the rather stark downward revisions for last month. Year-over-year, new orders (ex transportation) fell almost 6% after declining [...]
Durable goods continue to contract, with August down year-over-year in both shipments and orders now. New orders have been contracting since February (with January barely positive) at an almost steady rate near -3% the last few months, while shipments did not see a negative rate until May (and were slightly positive again in June). In capital goods, the pattern is [...]
At some point, these continuous divergences between seasonally-adjusted extrapolations and unadjusted year-over-year comparisons will cease to provide so much apparent relief. Time after time, the smallest jump in the monthly variation is taken as cause for completely discarding all prior economic worries even though the more measured and consistent unadjusted growth rates continue to press downward; especially since time and [...]
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