For the longest time, Jupiter was never thought to play much of a role in celestial mechanics of the much smaller scales in the solar system. Comets and asteroids may not seem to be significant to solar reality, but to those of us that reside on Earth there is much to appreciate about even planetary gravity and the survival of [...]
The world of orthodox economics is populated by generic assumptions. The biggest and most dangerous is that of “aggregate demand” which posits that any economic activity is perfectly substituted for any other economic activity. Since there is no distinction among “what” is taking place and more importantly “why”, that has led economic policy and especially monetary policy toward command management. [...]
Turning attention to that last bastion of monetary surety, equities, the oil slump might be the greatest challenge yet to the non-stop stock escalator. Earnings especially for the S&P 500 are being revised lower as energy companies weigh on results. And while there may be a tendency to dismiss energy as its own problem, there is much deeper unwinding underneath [...]
In commentary about Shinzo Abe’s overwhelming re-election last week, there was a growing sense of divergence between rhetoric and support. Clearly, Abe’s administration had the nearly full support of the Japanese people, a fact due more than anything to the manner in which “economics” is not just reported but understood. In describing the looming track of a worse recession from [...]
There is an undoubted shift in the behavior of consumers, including and especially during the peak retail season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, to say that is the sole reason for the decline in actual sales volume is to stretch that truth into (in many cases intentional) utter misdirection. The initial indications from the retail outlets are so far beyond [...]
WalMart finally broke its losing streak in same store comparable sales. Beating expectations, US comps rose 0.5% vs. the same 13 weeks in 2013. That must mean the consumer is resilient once more? While there is certainly no scale in the positive figure for Q3 (the 13 weeks ended October 31) the trend seems to be moving in the “right” [...]
It should not have come as a surprise to convention that the PCE component of GDP was not going to be leading economic gains. The monthly PCE series has been “better” in later 2014 than the winter, but that is far too narrow a context in which to draw any conclusions. No matter how you measure, American consumers continue to [...]
In some sense when trying to analyze the difference between an ill-suited measure and that same ill-suited measure seasonally adjusted amounts to Isaac D’Israeli’s critique of Thomistic tendencies toward using otherwise useful brainpower for pointless ends (thus, how many angels can dance on the point of a needle – not the head of a pin as the modern colloquial version [...]
To go alongside the “unexpected” turn in payrolls Friday, the National Retail Federation issued a statement that highlighted a somewhat contradictory assessment of the US economic picture. They had an easy time stating the facts, or at least what was estimated of US jobs in the retail industry: NRF calculated retail industry (excluding autos and gasoline) employment declined by 17,700 [...]
In the rush to make QE’s taper and the follow-on “forward guidance” appear more data-related than of due concerns about the structural (and ultimately philosophical) flaws in the economy, the regressionists of the Federal Reserve have come up with more regressions. The problem was always Ben Bernanke’s rather careless benchmarking to the unemployment rate. In fact, based on nothing more [...]
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