Industrial production in China accelerated in November to 6.2% from an abysmal 5.6% in October. As per usual, any similar change is met with assurances that this time, unlike all prior, everything is working. It has become a regular game of ill-considered contention, as every single move in IP or some other factor that stops declining is immediately and confidently [...]
Any ideas about junk bonds outperforming because of the booming economy confirmed by a monetary policy rate hike has been killed and buried. Conventionally, it was assumed that interest rates are not the primary “risk” parameter for high yield corporates of all flavors, and that is correct. Junk issues and lower tier obligors are creatures of the credit cycle, thus [...]
One of the problems with GDP as a statistical Swiss-Army knife for economic considerations is its very methodology. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t good and sound reasons for that kind of construction and presentation, only that in making such choices some elements are left out; even important pieces. In this case, I refer to the double counting problem which [...]
Given that Black Friday weekend, including Thanksgiving itself, was uninspiring, the fact that the Commerce Department’s estimates for retail sales for all of November were again among the worst shows that Black Friday actually remains a pivotal part of the holiday setup. The trend has been to dismiss the traditional Christmas buying season kickoff as if earlier discounts might have [...]
The only piece of the GDP revision to note is that the BEA is still having great difficulty estimating inventory. That isn’t surprising since businesses in this area are behaving far different than any expectation, even factoring the difficulty of the “recovery” environment. That leaves instead only Janet Yellen’s continuous pleading about the surge in consumer spending that never seems [...]
The problem with Brazil is that its central bank has done everything the monetary textbook requires of it. Setting aside that Banco itself is a literal mishmash of public and private interests (what central bank isn’t?), the freefall in the Brazilian economy of late is simply puzzling to the mainstream. Unlike the US or Europe, at least the descent is [...]
With financial markets sharply glued to the “dollar’s” renewed mischief, that means everything lies at the feet of the global economy. The US economy is supposed to be the one colorful and lively example in that otherwise souring picture, even if it has been temporarily pushed from ideal. In fact, despite all that has happened this year, and “unexpectedly” continues [...]
Once more we find no end in sight to the Chinese slowdown. To complete the weekly sweep of highly negative Chinese accounts, the major three released today were unfortunately complimentary to those already publicized. Only retail sales accelerated and by the smallest increment; in context, however, at 11% retail sales are still lower than the worst month of the China’s [...]
Janet Yellen and orthodox economists claim that the economy can only be gaining, and that word is taken, on faith, as if some updated, modern gold standard for meaning. No matter the contrary in actual evidence and observation, the “word” remains as if diktat were the only employ. It has produced some very strange dichotomies, particularly of late, where those [...]
If central banks are now almost exclusively on the defensive, we have no shortage of anecdotes and data to explain it. For a good long while economists and commentary managed to keep the US safely “decoupled” from the “overseas” maelstrom, but the deluge locally has become far too much to ignore. This is far, far deeper than just some indistinct [...]
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