Last week, Japan reported GDP growth of 1.7% in Q1. That was much better than expected and led to all the usual extrapolations about how bright the future is in Japan now that QQE is working (and NIRP since that was started during the quarter). In this devalued economic world of central banking for the sake of central banking, context [...]
Because industrial production for the Eurozone was estimated to have risen 2.4% in January, first quarter GDP was boosted to 0.6% (quarterly rate) as statisticians were expecting that European industry would at least hold up the rest of the quarter. While not figuring the same blistering pace, the GDP figure suggested at least the European economy holding on to that [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard Of the 19 reports released over the last two weeks for which we track a consensus estimate, only four were better than expected. And two of those were the two weekly jobless claims reports. The only other two better than expected reports were the Richmond Fed manufacturing survey and the personal income report. We had a run of [...]
The worst part of this stilted or stunted economy is that it isn’t nearly good enough to produce widespread prosperity (with very real questions as to whether it produces any prosperity at all). It has become self-reinforcing, however, to the point of circular logic. We (economists) are now so conditioned by the low, unstable growth that we are supposed to [...]
With no “unusual” snow or “residual seasonality”, the US economy once again grinds to a halt in Q1 only now with no more reasons to dismiss it. In what has become an annual ritual, GDP barely moves in the quarter immediately following the Christmas holiday. This time, however, it wasn’t just consumers holding back in Q1. The U.S. economy inched [...]
With the housing recovery, it is perhaps because it has been much more visible and earnest that the disparity is more easily appreciated and understood. Prices have surged in some places as much as the housing mania portion of the great bubble of the 2000’s, yet that has taken place despite levels of overall activity at only fractions of that [...]
You can always tell what kind of monthly variation any economic account provides from the commentary by which it is described. And there are, apparently, only two options: upward variations mean stimulus is working; downward variation just means that there will be more stimulus. Even by this crude cipher, you can still discern the state of the economic world since [...]
Last year, economists were fed up with winter. They had had enough of Q1’s always lagging, threatening to upend the idea that there is a solid and improving recovery. To drop a negative GDP quarter into that mix was the final straw, since negative quarters are exceedingly rare – they actually don’t occur outside of recession. In the four decades [...]
The IMF released the first 2016 edition of its World Economic Outlook (WEO). Titled Too Slow For Too Long, it seems as if the institution has finally caught on to the fact that the global recovery never really was a recovery. Throughout the report you get the sense that they are starting to figure out what is going wrong but [...]
The “final” estimate for Q4 GDP was uninteresting save the update to corporate profits and cash flow. The upward revision to 1.4% wasn’t really any different than the preliminary or advance estimates, and since 12% of it was simply a guess by the BEA it doesn’t amount to a whole lot of solid analysis especially when in conflict with so [...]
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