For a very long time, they tried it “our” way. It isn’t working out so well for them any longer, so in one sense you can’t blame them for seeking answers elsewhere. It was a good run while it lasted. The big problem is that what “it” was wasn’t ever our way. Not really. The Chinese for decades followed not [...]
In early September 2007, just a month after the eurodollar system broke and still weeks before the FOMC would finally see the need to do something, anything, private equity firm Carlyle Group added six new “senior investment professionals” intending on making investments in global banking and insurance. The timing was, well, suspect. Among those added to the firm was Randal [...]
Europe is as we all are. Ben Bernanke wrote a few years ago that his tenure at the Fed must have been a success in his view because the US economy didn’t perform as badly as Europe’s. As usual, this technically true comparison is for any meaningful purpose irrelevant. For one, the European economy underperformed before 2008, too. Second, after [...]
The second estimate for GDP was so similar to the first as to be in all likelihood statistically insignificant. The preliminary estimate for real GDP was given as $16,804.8 billion. The updated figure is now $16,804.1 billion. In nominal terms there was more variation, where the preliminary estimate of $18,860.8 billion is now replaced by one for $18,855.5 billion. Therefore, [...]
Accompanying the final estimate for Q1 GDP is the first estimate for the corporate profits and cash flow components. Profits rebounded from a dismal Q4, but that actually means much less than it sounds especially in the more important segments. Corporate profits before tax (without IVA and CCadj) were an estimated $1.86 trillion in Q1, better than the $1.77 trillion [...]
There has been a lot made of the fact that European GDP wasn’t worse in Q4, especially as Germany rallied to the continent’s economic defense. While initially the reactions were unabashedly positive, I think reality set in more so later after fuller digestion. In other words, everything we thought about Europe before today is still a problem, only that Germany [...]
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