The juxtaposition of the official unemployment rate in Japan against wage gains (losses, more precisely) raises an interesting and potentially debilitating conundrum. More workers are being employed inside Japan, but the average pay rate clearly is falling for new jobs. This, of course, sounds very familiar to Americans that have seen exactly that process play out in our versions of [...]
Anyone waiting on the warmer weather to bring out shoppers proving the existence of the mythical resilient consumer is going to be very disappointed with retail sales in May. The rebound from January and February isn’t much of anything other than a resumption of the prior trend – and that is a problem itself. In other words, if there was [...]
Now that we have results for both Wal-Mart and Target, the retail, and thus consumer, picture has been largely filled out. Both companies continue to blame other factors (both cold; Target credit card theft) while dancing around with soft presentations of minor allusions to struggling consumers. At what point do “struggling consumers” begin to register as something more than a [...]
The surge in Japanese GDP in the first quarter has given back some cautious optimism that eroded significantly in the fourth quarter of last year. The increase in activity was not unexpected, only the degree to which it reached. Given the household spending data from earlier, this result was foreshadowed. And I think that the analysis of spending applies equally [...]
March household spending in Japan surged by 7.2% Y/Y, the highest spending growth rate since 1975. That level even beat out March 1997, the month before the previous and similar tax hike. Extrapolating from that one number, there is now more hope that the Japanese economy may be able to withstand April’s tax intrusion without an economic disaster like that [...]
There is a tendency of the modern age (post-modern) to disregard conventions of the past as mere anachronisms suited only to academic curiosity about how people lived in less “civilized” times. There is much to be said about that impulse, not the least of which is the caution of such hubris. In seeking out history you often find that those [...]
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