Revolving consumer credit turned upward in March last year, which signaled to economists that the true end of the Great Recession was at hand. The largest impediment to the monetary version of the recovery was the “debt hangover” from the mortgage surge during the housing mania. Consumers, rightfully cautious after that disastrous experience, spent the early years of the “recovery” [...]
The fiscal year for retailers ended in January with nothing like what it was supposed to be. Still, as always, the suggestions remained that a rebound in consumerism would be before too long. If it wasn’t to be evident right away in February, the start of the 2016 fiscal year was at least supposed to be back in the plus [...]
Going only from the conventional interpretation of the optimistic 242,000 in payroll gains Friday, it is still remarkable how more than one-fifth of those purported job creations in February were due to activity in retail trade alone. The monthly variation estimate for the retail sector (not including wholesale or transportation of goods) was an especially robust +55k even though the [...]
Having established the farcical nature of wage interpretations on the shortest time scale, a wider contextual framework leads in the same direction of doubt. The point of any interest rate hike for monetary policymakers is to head off “inflation” before it gets out of hand; the economy “overheating.” Having undertaken sufficient (it is assumed) stimulus to surpass whatever hysteresis calculations, [...]
The February payroll estimate for the Establishment Survey was 242,000 with upward revisions to December and January, so we are told the labor market is surging once more. Last month when the Establishment Survey suggested “only” 151,000 (before revisions) it was taken as disappointing even though there is statistically no difference between 151k and 242k (a 90% confidence interval leaves [...]
During the global end of the Great Recession, Brazilian GDP contracted year-over-year in just three quarters. The worst was about -2.5% in Q1 2009, but by Q1 2010 GDP was rising 9% again. With the latest update today, Brazil’s GDP declined by just less than 6% year-over-year in Q4, representing the seventh consecutive contraction that doesn’t look to be ending [...]
There can be no doubt as to the manufacturing recession in the US, a direct reflection of US consumers. In a fitting confirmation of Chinese manufacturing, US factory orders declined for the 15th consecutive month in January 2016. The year-over-year decline was 3.3%, only slightly better than the revised 4.2% in December, but the length of this continuous decline means [...]
When the unemployment rate tumbled toward 5% and now below it, economists thought that was overheating. For monetary policy, that was much of the basis for adjusting Fed communication (not rate hikes, as credit and funding markets are doing the opposite). Despite the “best jobs market in decades”, however, confirmation of that robust labor agenda is scarce at best and [...]
The advance estimate for Q4 GDP was not appreciably different than the preliminary figures, changing +0.6% into +1.00033%. It wasn’t anywhere close to enough of a revision to meaningfully alter the picture of the 2015 economy. The average growth in 2015 was just 2.40% (until the next revision next month) compared to 2.43% in 2014; while the average of SAAR [...]
Anything with a positive number and the mainstream will jump. The latest was durable goods which only featured a positive number in the seasonally-adjusted series. Still, it was enough to send out the usual notices that the worst is over even for manufacturing. The U.S. manufacturing sector could be on the mend after struggling for the past year with a [...]
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