The chatter that continues over Japan’s spiral into (further) economic impoverishment is simply astounding since it is taken as “expert” by the media. A credentialed economist will look at some numbers and simply take them as meaningful, especially if they are the “right” sign in the “right” direction. This is either wholly obtuse or intentionally misleading. Stronger exports would support [...]
I still cannot fathom the infatuation with all these PMI’s. An extremely minor adjustment in a PMI can send risk markets soaring with enthusiasm, so much so that any recent angst about actual data fades into obscurity. Of course, that says a lot more about the state of such “markets” than it does the quality of the data, but these [...]
Japan is undoubtedly now quite the mess, but that is starting to spill-over into general view in what has to be a most unwelcome and even embarrassing occurrence for its practitioners. The problem, however, is much deeper now than just an economy seemingly forever doomed to the recesses of some kind of economic hell. For a quadrillion yen, the Bank [...]
The good news in Japan for August trade figures is that imports fell 1.5% Y/Y, but that was balanced by an almost identical 1.3% Y/Y decline in exports. Confounding all orthodox expectations, the yen’s radical devaluation did nothing to press divergence between imports and exports as it was “supposed” to. Instead, imports matched exports, at best, and where it counted [...]
With Brazil in recession and much of the “resource” part of the supply chain nearing that or worrying about it, you can surely bet that there are “unexpected” problems in the Chinese economy. As much as the word “decoupling” is being used once again (though in 2008 it was reversed, with the world supposedly able to decouple from US weakness) [...]
The Bank of Japan has already been pressured by events to reduce its economic expectations for 2014. At the end of 2013 there was enough cautious optimism that Japanese officials went ahead with their dubious proposal to try to appear fiscally responsible. The tax increase was expected to create a mild contraction in GDP before the economy then accelerated mildly [...]
As I noted yesterday with US housing construction, there has been a very unusual amount of emphasis added to the month-to-month changes of various indications. Maybe that is no more than normal, but it seems as if the confidence displayed in the minutiae has been amplified. Given the circumstances, that is both understandable and reprehensible at the same time. The [...]
This may be a more globally universal problem than specifically limited to just Japan, but since the Japanese have been encapsulated here by far the longest it has lost almost all meaning. At some point, there has to be a penetrating numbness that becomes downright debilitating which is why a degree of sympathy is called for despite it all. There [...]
I have little doubt that the most perverse aspect of orthodox economics is the idea of monetary neutrality. Taken as nothing more than an article of faith, monetary practitioners use the principle as cover to undertake drastic and blunt intrusions into markets and economies, with no guilt over having done so because they can simply invoke neutrality and proclaim some [...]
The juxtaposition of the official unemployment rate in Japan against wage gains (losses, more precisely) raises an interesting and potentially debilitating conundrum. More workers are being employed inside Japan, but the average pay rate clearly is falling for new jobs. This, of course, sounds very familiar to Americans that have seen exactly that process play out in our versions of [...]
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