It certainly does feel like 2014 all over again, at least in terms of sentiment and the air of a carefree attitude. There are dramatic differences, of course, but with regard to emotion there truly doesn’t seem to be much daylight between now and three years ago. All that was left to cap the comparison was for Greece to take [...]
The stock market has its earnings season, the regular quarterly reports of all the companies that have publicly traded stocks. In economic accounts, there is something similar though it only happens once a year. It is benchmark revision season, and it has been brought to a few important accounts already. Given that this is a backward looking exercise, that this [...]
We can add China to the list of locations where the near euphoria about inflation rates is rapidly falling apart. This is an important blow, as the Chinese economy has been counted on to lead the world out of this slump if through nothing other than its own sheer recklessness. “Stimulus” was all the rage one year ago, and for [...]
It is one of those things that will never be stated outright, nor does there exist the kind of unassailable proof that would convict in any legal sense. Regardless, monetary officials here and elsewhere are clearly trying to have it both ways. They know very well what is driving inflation rates upward of late, and it isn’t monetary policy success. [...]
Consistent with the LMCI, the JOLTS data series suggests very little has changed. There are two crossover points between them, where the level of Hires and the Quits Rate (a calculation derived from the JOLTS estimates) are included as two of the 19 factors in the LMCI. Though the latter was revised somewhat higher over the past few months, it [...]
Wholesale sales were up 8.3% in March 2017 unadjusted year-over-year. Like other accounts, however, the seasonally adjusted series was not impressed. On an adjusted basis, sales were flat month-over-month, just $50 million more in March than February. It isn’t clear what the problem might be, as the only calendar aberration is Easter that fell in March 2016 but not March [...]
Unemployment in Brazil typically rises at the start of each year, a ritual accepted in that part of South America in a way that it isn’t here (residual seasonality). In 2013, for example, from December 2012 through March the rate rose by 1.1 percentage points. The following year, from December through March, it increased by 1 percentage point. This year, [...]
The Federal Reserve’s Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI) wasn’t put together until the May 2014, but it was back-tested extensively to ensure that its various assumptions fit with observed conditions in the US economy – no matter what those conditions might have been or be in the future. Even still, given its nature as an amalgamation of 19 separate labor [...]
China’s trade statistics for April 2017 uniformly disappointed. They only did so, however, because expectations are being calibrated as if the current economy is actually different. It is instead merely swinging between bouts of contraction and low-grade growth, but so low-grade it really doesn’t qualify as growth. Positive numbers do get the mind racing, but since the end of 2011 [...]
US imports rose 9% year-over-year (NSA) in March 2017, after being flat in February and up 12% in January. For the quarter overall, imports rose 7.3%, a rate that is slightly more than the 2013-14 comparison. The difference, however, is simply the price of oil. Removing petroleum, imports rose instead 6.3% in March and just 4% for the first quarter [...]
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