With a growing “meat” scandal in China and elsewhere in Asia, it was not unsurprising to see McDonald’s post a sizable decline in same store sales in the region. The latest figures from July show exactly that, posting a 7.3% decline over July 2013. That compared to a 1.9% decline last year from July 2012, so there is likely a [...]
I saw this today and was astounded by it, though not at all surprised given my take on the economy. ZeroHedge reports on Bank of America calculating car leasing vs. car buying: So with car sales through the roof, the US consumer must be alive and well, right? Wrong, because there is one problem: it is car "sales" not sales. [...]
There is a lot that is deficient about the idea of the plucking model, but that speaks more about its mainstream use as a “law” of economic behavior than the elegant and intuitive simplicity behind it. Its primary observation is that a recession is the temporary interruption of the larger trend of economic advancement. What is missing lately in the [...]
While the orthodoxy continues to try to reassure everyone that the economy is still moving to plan, revised innumerably over the years imperceptible as progress has been, there are signs that even mainstream outlets are at least starting to question whether or not that is actually preferable. Not a lot of dots are connected yet, and certainly not from A [...]
With all due respect to durable goods, perhaps I was a bit too hasty in assigning it the moniker of most boring. There is certainly competition now, as the monthly payroll euphoria has become just as homogenous, curiously, and engrained enough where commentary can simply be copied and pasted from month-to-month. Most people probably will not recall that such regularity [...]
Following up with some more detail on yesterday’s GDP euphoria, a closer examination reveals that not much has changed beneath the headline refiguring. Again, I highly doubt the 3.9% (plus some rounding) survives further estimations, but that really doesn’t much matter at this point. Whether it ultimately arrives at 5% or 2% won’t change the trends that are embedded beneath [...]
I normally do everything I can to avoid sentiment surveys, like the Chicago PMI (the Chicago Business Barometer to be specific), because they really are misleading without exact context. However, any large move like the one in July should bring at least some interest since outlier events are often the most informative. What may be important is not necessarily the [...]
When the BLS’s Employment Cost Index fell to a two-year low last quarter (Q1 ’14) there were no expressions of fear over “deflation” or that the economy was growing weaker, instead mostly mentioning the intended aberration of supposedly everything. There were, in fact, very few pronouncements at all at the time. Yet, what a difference a return to trend makes. [...]
In light of second quarter GDP’s imminent release and the explosion of commentary it will undoubtedly create, I thought it useful to promote a better context that includes all pertinent variables of analysis and judgment. As I said earlier today on CNBC with Rick Santelli, it is often overlooked that the US economy has been undergoing “stimulus” courses for just [...]
The durable goods report has become one of the most boring and uninteresting of all the major data series. There has been little change in the pace of growth, as these segments are clearly stuck in the rut that seemingly captured everything in the middle of 2012. While there is growth, it is nothing like what we should see in [...]
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