The latest estimates of durable goods manufacturing was a blow to the idea that economic momentum had been gathering over the summer. Orders had rebounded almost to what you would expect in a more stable growth environment, but the level of shipments never quite caught up to them. Shipments (ex transportation) were up only 1.71% in October 2013 over October [...]
Just a day after discussing how retailers were going to be “smart” this holiday season, Bloomberg reports that WalMart is getting even “smarter”. “Wal-Mart dropped 1.6 percent after the retailer told suppliers its [sic] is cutting orders this quarter and next to address rising inventories.” The article spends a lot of effort trying to tie the WalMart move to “uncertainty” [...]
Not really much different to report from the Durable Goods numbers. There is a curious near-stasis present in the trends and patterns in each of these data series. For some reason, they want to follow and match the Great Recession as if there existed an economic template or programmed auto-pilot – which would really confound policymakers since this is decidedly [...]
Same story, different month. Durable goods are still running well-below 2008 comparisons, continung the run of bad numbers and trends. Headline durable goods were great due to a huge increase at Boeing, but the results outside of that were pretty much standard for 2013. While new orders continued a slight uptick in both durable goods ex-transportation and nondefense capital goods [...]
Given the weak state of the economy and its relation to so much monetary “stimulus”, it is still amazing that the standards for positive economic performance or momentum have been so drastically reduced. The durable goods report is a perfect example. There is no doubt that some manufacturing activity has ticked up after the disastrous months of February and March. [...]
Before we get to durable goods, I last noted manufacturing data seemed to indicate that the mini-cycle related to inventory appeared to be a desperately short two month uptick. This restocking (if that was what took place) was seen in various surveys and releases, notably the ISM indices and factory orders. The latest data for March corroborates a renewed downward [...]
Final revisions to Q4 2012 GDP were out today, with little surprise nor any major changes. Personal consumption expenditures were slightly lower, from adding 1.52% to GDP in the advance estimate, to 1.47% in the first revision and finally down to 1.28%. To underscore just how weak these figures are, real gross domestic purchases (the purchase of goods and services [...]
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