Now that Kinder Morgan has come out with a massive dividend cut, I think it will get harder to ignore that this isn’t just about crude oil prices and the death of “transitory.” There is a financial element here that is perhaps even more important. Kinder Morgan Inc., the biggest North American oil pipeline operator, cut its 2016 dividend by [...]
The fact that there is almost universal recognition of a “manufacturing recession” not just here but spreading across the world is a significant change. After resisting and ignoring as much as possible for more than a year, economic weakness is now no longer unthinkable. This is, however, no mere academic exercise as there are very real consequences as the former [...]
Global Growth Recession risks are low and growth should improve in 2016. Excess supply is especially apparent in the raw materials/commodities sectors. This state of overcapacity/supply and a strong dollar combined from 2014-2015 to create an environment of falling prices and sluggish growth in global manufacturing. The services sector continues to perform well. Continued expansion in the US coupled with a recovering [...]
The numbers all change with each month, but nothing really changes. And that includes how the economy changed in 2012 and clearly again in 2015. By raw count of the payroll figures, there were positive numbers in every location in the latest update as only full-time employment was close to zero growth (only +3k for November). The labor force grew [...]
As the manufacturing recession becomes more and more unassailable (and I mean that in more than one way), the fact that it still shows no end or let up suggests still greater difficulty beyond manufacturing. As feedback loops become more established and robust, and thus convince more and more non-manufacturing firms to adjust instead of waiting out for Janet Yellen’s [...]
The GDP statistics for Brazil as of Q3 2015 were worse than expected in every way imaginable. Real GDP fell 4.5% Y/Y, which is nearly double the worst quarter Brazil experienced during the Great Recession. Household spending fell 1.7%, the third consecutive quarter of contraction, while fixed investment declined an astounding 15%. That was the sixth straight reduction and the [...]
For the tenth straight week, dating back to the week just before the global liquidations in August, reported domestic crude inventories increased. At 489.4 million barrels, the current level of oil stock (excluding the SPR) is only slightly less than the record high of 490.9 million barrels reached the week of April 24. “Transitory” is dead. The increase in oil [...]
Despite everything that happened in July and August throughout the financial world, there remained a tendency to simply dismiss it as anomalous. That was curious in and of itself, but that the global liquidations then were not isolated but rather the latest in a continuing string of “odd” events strains such determined dimness. We have arrived at a point in [...]
The initial estimates for Black Friday spending are pretty grim; you can make that interpretation based only on the press releases themselves as neither of the words “strong” or “robust” appear in them. According to ShopperTrak, actual sales (mall sales) on Black Friday itself were up almost 15% from last year but only because there was a clear revulsion against [...]
On December 11, 2014, spot WTI closed at $60.01, down sharply from $76.52 the week before that Thanksgiving. In the space of only a few weeks, oil prices had collapsed far more than anyone thought possible; and yet there was very little urgency to the outcome. Economists, in particular, parroted throughout the media, were quick to assert both a supply [...]
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