If markets seem a bit on edge, I guess omicron seems a good reason if for no other reason than we don’t know much about it. But even that reaction points toward something else. A truly robust economy has little to fear from such unknowns, even from what might be predictable overreaction across the entire public sphere.The knee-jerk negative sentiment [...]
Christmas came early for retailers already experiencing a boom year. This, however, creates a bit of conundrum given that producers have suffered rather than flourished despite such great fortune at the top of the supply chain. In whichever location you look at, production has been at best questionable.Why?Theories abound. The mainstream is filled with those like what’s been reported as [...]
Hurricane Ida swept up the Gulf of Mexico and slammed into the Louisiana coastline on August 29. The storm would continue to wreak havoc even as it weakened the further inland it traversed. By September 1 and 2, the system was still causing damage and disruption into the Northeast of the United States.While absolutely tragic for those who suffered its [...]
It is costing more to live and be, so naturally people are looking for who it is they need to blame. Maybe figure out some way to stop it. You know and feel for the basics since everyone’s perceptions begin with costs of just living. This is what makes the subject of inflation so difficult, even more so in the [...]
An integrated circuit (IC) is a set of electronic circuits put together on one small, flat semiconductor medium. We call this thing a chip, and it is essential for so much of what we do in the modern computerized, digital world. Manufacturers can’t even produce cars without them.It stands to reason, then, that any shortfall or hitch in the availability [...]
Is there anyone left out there who doesn't know the rate of economic growth is slowing? The 10-year Treasury yield has fallen 45 basis points since peaking in mid-March. 10-year TIPS yields have fallen by the same amount and now reside below -1% again. Copper prices peaked a little later (early May), fell 16% at the recent low, and are [...]
Same stuff, different month. We can basically reprint both what was described yesterday about supply curves not keeping up with exaggerated demand as well as the past two months of commentary on Retail Sales plus Industrial Production each for the US. Quite on the nose, US demand for goods, anyway, is eroding if still artificially very high. Producers, on the [...]
The US economy is still stuck in the stall it's been in since early spring. Sometime in mid-March everything just seems to have gone into suspended animation. Interest rates and the copper/gold ratio stopped rising. Real interest rates (TIPS) stopped rising. The US dollar started falling. But nothing has fallen so far as to warrant concern about a double-dip recession. [...]
American consumers binged again in April, though not much more than they had in March. Previously delivered government stipends continue to inflate retail activity if not much else. According to the Census Bureau, retail sales rose “just” 0.7% last month when compared to the month before it. Given that March had been up (revised) nearly 11% versus February, any even [...]
Enormous. Terrific. Unbelievable. Biggest ever. The superlatives for US consumer spending during the month of March 2021 are appropriate, and for once they aren’t caused by some artifact of arithmetic or some other trick. While there are absolutely some base effects within the numbers, these levels of retail sales are far and away more than those. It's so ridiculous that [...]
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