Looking back now, January was such a weird month. You had, on the one hand, the barely restrained giddiness of the mainstream media proclaiming ultimate success of 5% GDP and an Establishment Survey (and dutiful unemployment rate) that could do nothing wrong. To this view, the economy was a certainty. Yet, on the other hand, markets around the world were [...]
The Japanese economy sank yet again, more than suggesting there is no recovery from the “inflation”-led recession that began six months before any tax change. Almost right from the start of QQE, Q4 2013, Japan’s GDP has either been contracting or barely rising. The net result is the monetary hole left behind by so many flawed theories. Primary among them, [...]
Last week, industrial production ticked higher but only somewhat while this week the Empire Fed manufacturing survey has caused extensive jitters to extend at least another week. Given those somewhat contrasting views on American industry they can be reconciled by simple timing matched against what the “dollar” has been doing across that period. Oil prices, that vital connection between “dollar” [...]
China apparently shocked some people last week by allowing the Yuan to fall 3.5% against the dollar. I don't know why in the world they would be shocked since we've known for months - heck almost a year now - that capital has been leaving China. I wrote about it back in March so it isn't like it was exactly a [...]
European GDP disappointed for Q2, which was only surprising to those expected something out of QE. At +0.3% (Q/Q), the European economy is clearly stuck in the same mindless rut that has taken hold since the 2011 crisis re-flaring. While recent convention holds, in light of this year’s QE, that the ECB has been idle during this time that simply [...]
Retail sales for June were revised upward by a significant amount, almost $2 billion, which has had the effect only of shuffling that month’s order among the worst. With higher auto sales growth, June overall retail sales were 3.31% year-over-year which remains about half of what would be considered healthy. For July, retail sales decelerated again, to just 2.86%, which [...]
Productivity estimates were better in Q2 than certainly Q1, even revised, but that still doesn’t change the clear disassociation between the BLS’s version of the economy and the BEA’s. That disparity becomes even messier as the BEA’s last benchmark revision sawed off significant “output” dating back to the now-recognized 2012 slowdown. In tandem, the BLS only revised hours worked (back [...]
Petroleum sales at the wholesale level grew to a year-to-date high in June. According to the Commerce Dept.’s latest estimates, crude oil sales jumped to $48.6 billion, seasonally-adjusted, from a low in January of just $41.9 billion. Though that seems like good news for a wholesale sector under tremendous inventory pressure, it means that absent that oil price effect wholesale [...]
Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the end of the eurodollar standard as a functioning system. Though the attainment of such dizzying scale was completely artificial, finance unbacked by real economy, it at least to that date had remained in more than superficial order. Reviewing the systemic break of that day remains quite useful in understanding where we are now, [...]
The monthly payroll report needs to be rebranded the monthly labor force report. By far, the most accurate measure of the series continues to be the apathy of Americans not currently working or looking toward purportedly massive employment expansion. Those two positions are not only inconsistent, they are by all intuitive sense mutually exclusive. No less orthodoxy than Janet Yellen [...]
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