The BEA estimated that GDP in Q3 accelerated to 2.8% over Q2 2013, coincidentally matching the Q/Q growth rate from Q3 2012 (more on that in a moment). The largest “boosts” to GDP came from tumbling imports and growing inventories. Those two segments accounted for 1.2% in additional “growth” over Q2. While inventories rose and consumers and businesses bought less [...]
In the middle of September, nearly a full year after the yen began its devaluation, the Japanese administration held talks with business lobbies and labor unions. The focus of the affair was to make sure businesses knew that the intentional appeal of yen devaluation and thus commodity inflation was doomed absent wage growth. “’Our mission with these talks is to [...]
Global trade is one of the primary “headwinds” facing the global economy, and it does contribute to the lack of dollar flow impeding exchange functions in troubled currency areas. A large part of the “solution” proffered by central banks is an appeal to currency devaluation in order to boost export activity. The primary impediment, something that flies in the face [...]
QE in any language has enthralled the mainstream media and economics profession so much that what should be so simple to interpret winds up as uncritical mush. For example, in the Washington Post with Bloomberg yesterday, the “business” section had this to say about Japan’s export data release for July: “Japan’s exports jumped by the most since 2010 in July, [...]
Because of the way GDP is calculated currently, the latest release on the US trade deficit is going to boost GDP slightly for Q2 (and just as likely will get canceled by a downward revision somewhere else). The logic and methodology is sound, but that does not mean it is a perfect measure. The fact that imports declined so much [...]
On March 28, 1997, the Bureau of Economic Research downgraded economic growth estimates for the fourth quarter of 1996. Over the course of the two months between the advance estimate, preliminary estimate and final estimate, the BEA reduced GDP by a rather large 0.9%. The reduction in GDP then was similar in absolute size to the current revisions to Q1 [...]
The operative theory behind QE relates to the academic exercise of overcoming the real world constraint of nominal interest rates, called the zero lower bound (ZLB). Once the offending central bank has pushed rates to the ZLB, conventional monetary science posits only extraordinary means to overcome this limitation. After all, central banks cannot be impotent in the face of the [...]
The global supply chain is pretty well established at this point, particularly in the years since the obvious dollar devaluation (Y2K and forward). Commodity countries like the BRICs (South Africa only gets included in BRICS when gold is mentioned) ship to manufacturing centers in the east, primarily China, that assemble and manufacture for further embarkation to end markets in the [...]
The bounce for Germany seems to be over, and, much like US manufacturing, there appears the mini cycle. Markit PMI for Germany: Both the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment and IFO Business Climate Surveys disappointed expectations, as sentiment in Germany looks to have passed an inflection and rolled over again in sympathy with manufacturing. For an economy coming off a [...]
While last Friday’s jobs report had a decent headline number (if little else), the wholesale report is nothing but trouble. Start with wholesale sales, down 1.2% from September on an adjusted basis, while inventories rose 0.5%. Automobile sales fell 3.1%, dragging durable goods sales 0.9% lower on the month. Even nondurable goods had a difficult month, largely due to petroleum [...]
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