Durable goods estimates were somewhat better in November than they have been in recent months. Year-over-year, orders contracted by less than 1% in the latest month after contracting more than 2.7% in each of the prior six. In September, durable goods orders (ex transportation) were down almost 5.5%. While that counts as improvement it may not count as meaningful. The [...]
Durable goods orders and shipments were estimated still consistent with the depressive environment that has “unexpectedly” lingered for the whole of 2015. Year-over-year, new orders for durable goods fell 4.13% while shipments contracted by 3.74%. That is the ninth straight decline in orders and the fourth in shipments (and five out of the last six months). The 6-month averages in [...]
Written Tuesday Oct 27 Anyone looking to buck the “dollar’s” direction in September has been sorely disappointed by almost every single data point so far. The latest is durable goods which was even more ugly across-the-board than August – and that includes the rather stark downward revisions for last month. Year-over-year, new orders (ex transportation) fell almost 6% after declining [...]
Durable goods continue to contract, with August down year-over-year in both shipments and orders now. New orders have been contracting since February (with January barely positive) at an almost steady rate near -3% the last few months, while shipments did not see a negative rate until May (and were slightly positive again in June). In capital goods, the pattern is [...]
Factory orders gained slightly month-over-month on a seasonally-adjusted basis but collapsed in year-over-year unadjusted terms. The latter was due, only in part, to base effects of the huge surge in July last year for Boeing. Even factoring that somewhat ill-suited comparison, factory activity is still way down and, as other indications, only undergoing a slight pause in the downward trend. [...]
At some point, these continuous divergences between seasonally-adjusted extrapolations and unadjusted year-over-year comparisons will cease to provide so much apparent relief. Time after time, the smallest jump in the monthly variation is taken as cause for completely discarding all prior economic worries even though the more measured and consistent unadjusted growth rates continue to press downward; especially since time and [...]
The benchmark revisions (trend-cycle) to durable goods left us with a smaller estimated economy but that wasn’t supposed to be a problem because all that matters supposedly is what comes next. In other words, the cycle was already deficient so the scale of that deficiency was not meant to suggest anything about the next phase, according to economic projections. If [...]
Durable goods orders and now shipments continue to be a serious drag on the overall economy. On a year-over-year basis, shipments joined orders in contracting for both durable goods (ex transportation) and capital goods. For some, there was a glimpse of hope in that the seasonally-adjusted category of new orders for capital goods rose in May, but that was, as [...]
Durable goods orders declined for the third consecutive month in April, meaning with January’s flat reading that new orders for this important segment of consumer “demand” has been consistently shrinking in all of 2015 so far. New orders for capital goods have been negative year-over-year in all four months. With the pace of shipments just now starting to decelerate, it [...]
Both Keynesians and monetarists are almost entirely focused on demand, aiming squarely at spending as the means to economic growth. Since 2008, and really 2007, the amount of “stimulus” recorded in that attempt to beckon “aggregate demand” is unlike anything ever seen before. Trillions and trillions of QE-drawn magic have been unleashed as well as government deficits as large as [...]
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