With a growing “meat” scandal in China and elsewhere in Asia, it was not unsurprising to see McDonald’s post a sizable decline in same store sales in the region. The latest figures from July show exactly that, posting a 7.3% decline over July 2013. That compared to a 1.9% decline last year from July 2012, so there is likely a [...]
Since I believe the Gallup poll estimates to be significant, I want to revisit them with the addition of one more factor which I think further illustrates the distinct lack of progress toward escape velocity. By Gallup’s own definitions, they ask respondents (with representative sampling techniques, including a 50% landline/50% cell mix) what they spent yesterday apart from homes, autos [...]
Gallup’s latest figures on consumer spending in June put to rest any idea of a major surge, completing a picture of the second quarter that is far more tepid than any weather-related symmetry with the first would have you believe. It has been an ongoing theme for several weeks as incoming estimates (aside from sentiment surveys that never mean what [...]
Entrenched narratives die extremely hard, with all due respect to John McClane’s [Bruce Willis] aging franchise, and I cannot remember something so cemented as the recovery idea this year. That is really saying something considering that each and every New Year’s Day after the trough of the Great Recession has brought out the same exact sentiment, year after year like [...]
With today’s retail sales report, there is broad confirmation of the diminishing “resilience” of consumer abilities that have been dampening expectations ever since the turn in season failed to produce a massive surge. That is not to say that the past four months have not been better than those just prior, as growth has indeed cleared that low hurdle. It [...]
Whether intentional or not, we are living through a great experimentation in economic theory. It is believed that recessions are nothing more than depressed psychology, so much so that an extension of that theory posits that an intense and widespread counter-effort may in fact allow for their elimination. If I tell you, as someone in position of “economic” authority, that [...]
Most people today pay little attention to the business of movies, particularly since most new releases are aimed squarely at teenage boys and their appetite for unanchored and gratuitous CGI explosions and mayhem. I’m not saying that movies need to change, not at all, as apparently that is what the current movie market seemingly demands. It was, after all, a [...]
There are sentiment surveys and then there are real dollars. The sentiment surveys are holding their own, but there is nothing they can tell us about absolute levels of growth. Further, sentiment surveys were designed and calibrated under far different conditions than what we experience today. As much as even the major statistical releases are struggling with faded correlations, that [...]
Gallup’s survey of consumer spending in February conformed largely to the orthodox script of weather-beaten households forgoing January purchases. The large drop in January was thus assumed a temporary condition that would simply spillover into February. And that was the sense gained by Gallup’s results, with a large increase in February over January. Americans' daily self-reports of spending averaged $87 [...]
In the fourth quarter of 2007, WalMart became the first retailer in history to surpass $100 billion in quarterly sales. It was an impressive feat despite growing unease over what were then considered (by the vast majority of economists) unrelated matters of the financial economy (subprime was “contained”). Overall, sales had grown 8.3% (including membership fees to Sam’s Club), though [...]
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