There is simply no way to spin these figures as anything good. Not just the usual ones were talk about here, but more so some new data that you probably haven’t seen before. Beginning with the regular, it doesn’t matter that the level of initial jobless claims has declined substantially over the past few weeks. The fact of the matter [...]
We have to be somewhat careful in making too much out of statistics taken at extreme times like these. Massive moves can trigger unreliable noise in them. The second quarter of 2020 qualifies in every possible way. And the numbers it has produced are certainly extreme.Late last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued its preliminary assessment of labor [...]
The Federal Reserve has been trying to propagate two big lies about the economy. Actually, it’s three but the third is really a combination of the first two. To start with, monetary authorities have been claiming that growing liquidity problems were the result of either “too many” Treasuries (haven’t heard that one in a while) or the combination of otherwise [...]
There’s a couple of different ways that Unit Labor Costs can rise. Or even surge. The first is the good way, the one we all want to see because it is consistent with the idea of an economy that is actually booming. If workers have become truly scarce as macro forces sustain actual growth such that all labor market slack [...]
Is recession coming? Well, yeah, of course it is, but whether it is now, six months from now or 2 years from now or even longer is impossible to say right now. Our Jeff Snider has been dutifully documenting all the negativity reflected in the bond and money markets and he is certainly right that things are not moving in [...]
The economic data reported over the last month managed to confirm both that the economy is slowing and that there seems little reason to fear recession at this point. The slowdown is mostly a manufacturing affair - and some of that is actually a fracking slowdown - but consumption has also slowed. On a more positive note, housing seems to [...]
Liquidity preferences are one of the least discussed economic concepts. There are several channels into which monetary instability can hamper the real economy. A “dollar” squeeze doesn’t just impact banks, they often pass it along further down the economic chain. In its most extreme form, we had something like 2009. Some of the best companies all over the world found [...]
Is the rate hiking cycle almost done? Not the question on everyone's minds right now so a good time to ask it, I think. A couple of items caught my attention recently that made me at least think about the possibility. There has been for some time now a large short position held by speculators in the futures market for [...]
The yield on the 10 year Treasury note briefly surpassed the supposedly important 3% barrier and then....nothing. So, maybe, contrary to all the commentary that placed such importance on that level, it was just another line on a chart and the bond bear market fear mongering told us a lot about the commentators and not a lot about the market [...]
For the second straight quarter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates US productivity growth was less than 1%. That’s not surprising given the weakening in output as measured by GDP, the data reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Productivity is the bridge between the BLS’s labor numbers and the more general economic assessments of the BEA (Private [...]
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