Without the assistance of an extra day as in February, durable and capital goods orders and shipments returned to the usual contraction. As is typical for this part of the slowdown, these are not huge declines but merely the continuation of contraction now stretching into a second year. Durable goods orders (ex transportation) were in March 0.23% less than March [...]
Economists will not remove themselves from seeing the economy as it “should be” rather than take it for what it is (and what that actually means). They have latched their narrative to the idea that it is you who has the perception problem no matter how isolated the “recovery” becomes. There never was much indication for a decent recovery all [...]
There has always been something off about the housing rebound from the depths of the crash. It was, of course, aided in good part by various QE’s that had the effect of skewing marginal benefits of the housing recovery to “investors” and especially institutional investors with the best, cheapest access to credit. From a cycle perspective, the great bubble ended [...]
The mainstream view of the unemployment statistics suggest that any weakness in the US economy, manufacturing or beyond, will be temporary and shallow because employment growth remains robust. The question is not whether the statistics suggest such a trend but rather if those accounts correspond with anything real. As noted earlier this week, even the Federal Reserve’s relatively new measure [...]
The corporate junk bubble had gotten so beaten up and so dire that removal of the liquidation pressure was bound to attract bargain hunters and momentum chasers. Despite all that has happened, the lust for huge potential gains remains constant. Where that might have been more expressed upon the short side last year, with the end of the last liquidation [...]
There is undoubtedly serious stratification in the housing market, as higher end homes have no trouble selling at greater and greater price points. That, in turn, has left those owing homes in the tiers below struggling, supposedly, to do what Americans of past generations have done – move up to bigger and better. Because these middle level home owners are [...]
No matter how bad the economy seems to get elsewhere in various data series, the unemployment rate and the common assessment of the labor market (provided by the Establishment Survey) usually prevails. It has become almost a template where any description of the offending economic account will attach some version of, “X was down unexpectedly but should only be temporary [...]
As the major stock indices overtake or threaten psychological round numbers again (S&P 500 2,100; DJIA 18,000), they have done so with the same problem as occurred in 2015. Stocks have been overvalued for some time in historical comparison especially after QE3 and QE4, but it was supposed to be in anticipation of the full recovery that QE would make. [...]
Economic Reports Scorecard Survey based economic reports continue to run counter to real world, actual data. Since the real data tends to lag, an optimist would probably take this as good news. A pessimist would dismiss it altogether as useless survey based data. Me? I'm a realistic optimist. I see the survey based data as potentially positive since attitude and [...]
US industrial production fell yet again in March to (benchmark revised) -2% year-over-year. With updated revisions, the contraction in IP now extends seven months rather than what would have been just five under the prior assumptions. As anticipated yesterday, auto production was a leading factor in the retreat. Manufacturing output decreased 0.3 percent in March. The production of durables moved [...]
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