The Q2 GDP report (+4.1% from the previous quarter, annualized) was heralded by the administration as a great achievement and certainly putting a 4 handle on quarter to quarter growth has been rare this cycle, if not unheard of (Q4 '09, Q4 '11, Q2 & Q3 '14). But looking at the GDP change year over year shows a little different [...]
June was a good month for Japanese workers. Real wages rose at the fastest pace in eight years, jumping nearly 3% for the first time since 2010. The data, reported by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, was the first piece of positive economic news in some time. As you might expect, the wage figures are being taken [...]
In October 2015, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Pedigree matters, a fact easily established by how easy it is for central bankers and former central bankers to have their thoughts published in any mainstream outlet of their choosing. Record doesn’t mean so much, performance on the job secondary at most [...]
This is one of those time where so much has happened that in the end it amounts to so very little. The latest GDP estimates included a sharp rise in the current estimates, a reworking of past estimates that seemed to have made the economy much richer, but behind all that the same economic picture as before. As most people [...]
For the second half of 2015, how dicey did it really get in China? It’s difficult to assess going by something like real GDP given how notorious the Chinese have become for hitting their growth targets no matter what. But for those two quarters we can infer a whole bunch of nasty problems by the difference between real GPD growth [...]
Mexico will have a new President on December 1. Falling short in each of the prior two elections, Andrés Manuel López Obrador won convincingly this time. Though a thorough leftist, AMLO, as he is called in Mexico, ran on the familiar populist, anti-establishment topics. For yet another country its political background has shifted dramatically. Mexicans are apparently completely fed up [...]
Does a year matter? It seems like a sufficient length of time whereby solid conclusions might be reached. While that may be true in a lot of disciplines, it is not so in Economics. Recall that in late June 2017, ECB President Mario Draghi kicked up a minor fury over presumed “hawkish” comments. It triggered a worldwide BOND ROUT!!! as [...]
Back a few months ago when Europe was booming, or at least everyone was sure that this one particular economy was, market futures prices indicated an expectation for the first European rate hike to take place by Q2 2019. That was consistent with the US Federal Reserve’s experience as well as how the mainstream narrative had developed especially over the [...]
The Federal Reserve published its latest update for Z1, the Financial Accounts of the United States (formerly Flow of Funds). That means we can update our valuation metrics for a good piece of the US stock market. Tobin’s Q starts with the premise that the value of any company is in many ways dictated by its accounting net worth. We [...]
A recent poll in Brazil showed that one-third of Brazilians favor “military intervention.” The country had been gripped by a crippling trucker’s strike, the results of which have been almost complete economic shutdown. Intervention, as it is softly termed, would be nothing less than a coup. The direct cause of the strike is quite simple. Under former President Dilma Rousseff, [...]
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