When real household spending fell by 4.6% in April 2014 it was cause for concern. That was the first month after the tax hike hit and the decline in spending was much larger than anticipated (by economists, at least). Despite the heavy toll, Bank of Japan officials remained (outwardly) wholly unconcerned over what was believed a minor setback on the [...]
Japan has a history of revising its economic figures all over the place. The QQE era seems to have made GDP accounting something of an art form rather than the quantitatively determined “science” of how it is presented. For example, last December the Japan Times ran a story on December 2, 2014, under the headline Japan’s Recession May Be Shallower [...]
The FOMC at least still knows how to throw a party. It may not be what it once was, but for one day there was the familiar euphoria predicated upon the wish that central bankers might know something about anything. All-too-quickly, however, it vanished as it becomes increasingly clear, despite all attempts to rewrite this history, that there are no [...]
The Japanese economy sank yet again, more than suggesting there is no recovery from the “inflation”-led recession that began six months before any tax change. Almost right from the start of QQE, Q4 2013, Japan’s GDP has either been contracting or barely rising. The net result is the monetary hole left behind by so many flawed theories. Primary among them, [...]
With base comparisons out of the way moving past the calendar months of Japan’s tax change last year, the continuing recession re-emerges. Real wages fell 2.9% year-over-year in June despite “inflation” remaining far below (thankfully for the Japanese) Bank of Japan’s intentions. Contractual earnings nominally were slightly higher but “special cash earnings” fell 6.5% after rising 25% in May. That [...]
Japanese household spending increased 5.5% in nominal terms in May; 4.8% in real spending growth. That was the first monthly increase since November and since it was a positive number, and not as typically close to zero, it is being hailed as another great sign of QQE success. With Q1 GDP revised up to nearly 5%, economists are back to [...]
The estimates for home construction in May were pretty much as expected except for one single data point. The calculation for new permits in the multi-family segment jumped by 53.5% year-over-year, completely out of character with everything else. Given that fact, it seems far more likely that the permits estimate is an outlier or artifact of even expected variation. That [...]
It makes a very interesting contrast, to start the week under cloud of suspicion only to end it with its reverse. Economic data was routinely awful earlier, though for the most part financial markets are moved more by how that might make Janet Yellen feel than anything of a fundamental basis for all those prices. Typically, the ISM surveys are [...]
At some point in the middle of the last century, economics of money shifted to economics of psychology. When Milton Friedman wrote his 1963 book, A Monetary History, it was an effort that uncovered the role of money in the collapse of the Great Depression as he and his co-author, Anna Schwartz, saw it. Whether or not it was a [...]
For Japan, the comparisons for March 2015 estimates are going to be tough as the yearly look-back aligns to March 2014 and the great surge prior to the tax increase. The distortive base effects make it more difficult to figure out just how little was gained (or lost) in spending and income. So the large granular declines are not suggestive [...]
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