When QQE was first officially introduced, I produced what I thought would be a “template” for the trajectory of the Japanese economy. On a strictly reasoned basis, without any forward calculations or regressions, the Japanese, and Bank of Japan in particular, were making a choice with what I thought was very little chance of ultimate success. You can understand, somewhat, [...]
The biggest thorn in the recovery narrative, or whatever it is that the FOMC claims is guiding its hand, is that consumers are not spending as they “should” under such circumstances. Retail sales not only have disappointed this year, bookended by “unexpected” weather on one and an as-yet excused position for the other, they are downright awful. That is confirmed [...]
Gallup’s daily spending tracking poll dipped slightly in August, but what matters most is that spending levels have been flat now going back more than a year. There is no insight provided as to why that has occurred, only that people at the bottom ends of the income spectrum are unwilling or, more likely, unable to increase their economic activity. [...]
Maybe using the word “troll” in this sense is overdoing it, but in more than one way it seems deserved given what has been presented. The retail picture so far at the beginning of the back-to-school season has been, at best, mixed. But you don’t get that idea from most of what is presented. As Thomson Reuters starts its latest [...]
With an election looming it is no surprise that efforts to sway voters via economic framing have been heightened. There are, however, the usual and predictable responses, and then there is what can only be called epic trolling (as the kids say). Publishing in Forbes, of all places, Adam Hartung quotes somebody named Bob Deitrick: President Obama has achieved a [...]
You would think that if economists and policymakers were actually confident in the recovery idea that they would be mostly unbothered by monthly variation. Even in the most robust of periods there are no straight lines, and even the strongest job markets (the real ones that don’t need narratives) take a break now and again. Judging by reactions today to [...]
Despite any intent, the revisions to wages and real incomes that I highlighted yesterday actually go a long way toward providing an explanation for other “aberrations” that still exist. The primary problem I have with accepting the mainstream version of economic events, particularly that of the Establishment Survey, is that the labor force is still shrinking, or at least barely [...]
Personal intuition usually serves well in both economics and finance, which is why, despite all the billions of dollars and amazing efforts otherwise, this business is still an art and not a “science” (even pseudo-). I should have remembered as such the last time I actually reported on a sentiment survey, as the Chicago PMI a few months back tumbled [...]
The Bank of Japan has already been pressured by events to reduce its economic expectations for 2014. At the end of 2013 there was enough cautious optimism that Japanese officials went ahead with their dubious proposal to try to appear fiscally responsible. The tax increase was expected to create a mild contraction in GDP before the economy then accelerated mildly [...]
In the rush to make QE’s taper and the follow-on “forward guidance” appear more data-related than of due concerns about the structural (and ultimately philosophical) flaws in the economy, the regressionists of the Federal Reserve have come up with more regressions. The problem was always Ben Bernanke’s rather careless benchmarking to the unemployment rate. In fact, based on nothing more [...]
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