Wal-Mart is not just the world’s largest retailer, it employs some 2 million workers and handles an estimated 8 cents of every dollar spent by consumers. Ninety percent of all Americans live within 15 minutes (average) of a Wal-Mart and the retailer averages better than 100 million customers per week. That racks up to about $36 million in sales per [...]
The term consumer exhaustion can apply to several circumstances, but typically they all relate to exhaustion of resources. Households can appeal to wages, transfers, savings or debt, and usually some combination of the four, to maintain living standards and discretionary budgets. So exhaustion, like that of yesterday’s GDP, could be due to any one segment failing more than the others [...]
I suppose when your entire task derives from regression-based statistics, there is the tendency to incorporate straight lines into even your own thought patterns. Of course, that leads to self-reinforcing bias and should be canceled by some governing process. Usually that governing process takes the form of applied knowledge (as opposed to math-based knowledge) and plain common sense. In a [...]
The economic theme of the 2013 was inventory as it accumulated in the retail apex of the supply chain. Wholesalers have been far more cautious about expanding inventory, coming far short of even 2012 levels after the dramatic experience after the 2012 holiday season. Despite this conscious desire to not overextend, they may not have much choice given the situation [...]
Herb Stein was an economist that drew the unenviable task (though I don’t think he saw it as such) of being chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents Nixon and Ford. He was a man who knew imbalance up close and personal. To that end, he once quipped, “Economists are very good at saying that something cannot go [...]
In anticipation of tomorrow’s jobs frenzy, with all attention fixed to a statistic that was never meant to convey meaning in the current predicament (the unemployment rate is not supposed to be driven by the denominator), a review of context is in order. That is particularly true as I have detailed recent indications of a foul and maladroit trajectory for [...]
Last week, NBC News in cooperation with the Wall Street Journal reported that, “57% of Americans believe the U.S. is still in recession.” Given what has transpired not just recently, but over the entire stretch of “recovery”, that result is only surprising that it’s not higher. The pretext of the article linked that poll finding with very little support for [...]
With both the final revision (for now, benchmarks still to be re-estimated numerous times) for last quarter’s GDP estimate and the news that jobless claims “unexpectedly” fell, the idea of recovery is making rounds again particularly in the context of spring (the season). BusinessWeek sums it up best: Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly declined last week to an almost [...]
The December ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI came in more than a bit lower than expected. Part of that has to do with the lingering expectations that the economy is turning upward, with some recent indications and Q3 GDP showing an assumed rebound forming. However, as noted over and over, it has been an inventory illusion propagated by QE-induced near-hysteria. There are [...]
Commodity prices have been pressured lower in recent months, further suggesting that demand in the global economy is moving in the opposite direction of most mainstream commentary. The lack of price action, while ultimately good for consumers, is a big problem when such “deflation” is not driven by productivity. There is a world of difference between a lack of demand [...]
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