I suppose this was not really a surprise given how the Japanese people seem to have simply accepted their fate, economically speaking, so the resounding re-election of Abe’s party removes any further sympathy from a people dooming themselves to this sustained, toxic course. The election itself was not all about the economy in immediate consideration as there were several other [...]
The initial indications from private retail metrics on the Black Friday kickoff were not good, though numerous attempts to downplay those results were initiated. The monthly retail sales figures from the Census Bureau will make that much harder as they square with the downbeat Black Friday estimates. In other words, Black Friday wasn’t “off” because consumers were “pulled” to shop [...]
The recession-like “stimulus” of recent vintage doesn’t seem to have affected the movie business. The Thanksgiving weekend is typically devoid of tremendous or blockbuster new titles for obvious reasons. However, just like people failed to show up at the mall they also skipped the theater. As I have noted before, this is not because movies are mostly narrowly-tailored junk, as [...]
WTI is trading below $64 this afternoon and the long end of the UST curve is being bid rather starkly, the 30-year has dropped below 2.90%, there is an important element to consider about such “price discovery.” As my colleague Doug Terry points out, a 40% drop in oil prices is no longer strictly a matter of finance. In other [...]
The retail sales release for August was actually quite alarming. The track of sales pretty much confirms the end of the spring “bounce” that showed up in Gallup’s figures, but the real concern is that the “bounce” itself was never more than a minor adjustment; an absence of further erosion as it were. That is nothing like what is being [...]
To go alongside the “unexpected” turn in payrolls Friday, the National Retail Federation issued a statement that highlighted a somewhat contradictory assessment of the US economic picture. They had an easy time stating the facts, or at least what was estimated of US jobs in the retail industry: NRF calculated retail industry (excluding autos and gasoline) employment declined by 17,700 [...]
With retail sales this week bringing an “unexpected” shock to those forecasting a robust economic rebound (outside of inventory, anyway) in the US, further confirmation has been offered pretty much everywhere else. WalMart’s quarterly report was as it has been since the end of 2012 with continuing slow erosion. US same store comparables were flat, which is something of an [...]
One more point on retail sales and consumer spending, as though the figures presented earlier are, I think, all pretty demonstrative of what is taking place in the economy, they can still be enhanced by taking account of additional factors. None of the data from retail sales or Gallup’s measures of economic advance are “deflated” or adjusted for changes in [...]
Whether intentional or not, we are living through a great experimentation in economic theory. It is believed that recessions are nothing more than depressed psychology, so much so that an extension of that theory posits that an intense and widespread counter-effort may in fact allow for their elimination. If I tell you, as someone in position of “economic” authority, that [...]
In anticipation of tomorrow’s jobs frenzy, with all attention fixed to a statistic that was never meant to convey meaning in the current predicament (the unemployment rate is not supposed to be driven by the denominator), a review of context is in order. That is particularly true as I have detailed recent indications of a foul and maladroit trajectory for [...]
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