Productivity in Q4 2016 was estimated to have been 1.29%, suggesting that last quarter was merely bad rather than unusually bad as it had been just before. Productivity during what was the near-recession in the three quarters including and after Q4 2015 was negative in all three. That would suggest, strongly, why labor market statistics have uniformly described a rather [...]
As a practical policy matter, monetary neutrality almost forces all official considerations to the downside. If you believe that money cannot alter the baseline for the economy, then the only time to consider the upside is where it is clearly “overheating.” In addition to placing inordinate importance on determining trend, in the aftermath of the Great “Recession” it has meant [...]
Nonresidential Fixed Investment, the GDP component most alike capital expenditures, broke above $2.2 trillion in Q4 for the first time in over a year. It was up for the third straight quarter, suggesting that perhaps the start of the year and its near recession could be the worst of at least the appearance of negative signs in business investment. As [...]
Inventories in the fourth quarter rebounded rather sharply, at least in terms of how inventory is calculated as a contribution to GDP. The GDP version of inventory turned negative in Q2, and was only slightly positive in Q3. In the final quarter of 2016, however, the total change is preliminarily estimated to have been $51.1 billion. That isn’t quite back [...]
Gross Domestic Product for the fourth quarter of 2016 disappointed once again, which is to say that it was perfectly consistent. At just 1.856%, quarter-over-quarter, it was the fifth time out of the past six quarters less than 2%. Only last quarter where unusual export activity pushed GDP up was the growth rate anywhere close to what it should be [...]
We have to start with the understanding that Alvin Hansen was completely wrong. Hansen was the American economist who in the late 1930’s worried that the Great Depression was not just a severe, catastrophic event but a permanent alteration in the economic landscape. For those who took him seriously, it was a perpetual midnight setting against robust growth that had [...]
Canada’s economy remains the distinct enigma of the developed world, where the binary business cycle breakdown is perhaps most conspicuous. When oil prices first crashed to end 2014 and start 2015, even economists expected Canada’s economy to suffer, so exposed as it was and remains to the energy sector. But after two rough quarters to begin last year, that was [...]
Gross Domestic Product in the United States for the third quarter of 2016 was revised higher from the preliminary estimate of 2.86% to now 3.109%, which is to say there is once more no difference. That is true even in comparison to earlier this year where GDP was less than 1.5% in each of the three preceding quarters. It should [...]
Dating all the way back to February 11 and the Chinese turn on the “dollar”, the eurodollar futures curve had been stuck in a relatively narrow range. That trading band was widened a bit in June before and after Brexit (related to CNY’s regular mid-year drop), with futures on the whole curve bid up to early July and then slightly [...]
Throughout the 1990’s, calculated productivity in the US skyrocketed in what was taken then as a sign of monetary and economic genius, the “maestro” as it was. By the incomplete measures we have, that certainly seemed to be a plausible case. Starting in 1997, the BLS’s first measure for economic productivity, output per hour, surged. The consequence of that productivity [...]
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