The aging of the Baby Boomers is not something that caught economists completely by surprise. That generation has been the subject of (academic) study going back to the surge in birth rates right after World War II. In economic terms, the challenges presented by the prospective retirement years for this cohort has been anticipated to some degree all along, particularly [...]
The ISM Manufacturing Index declined slightly for March 2017, pulling back by 0.5 points after registering a multi-year high in February. The difference between the index and troubling auto sales, for example, is another reminder of what is truly a large disparity between economic statistics and sentiment. The ISM version of a PMI is considered more reliable because it asks [...]
It is more than interesting that Herbert Hoover has become the modern ideal of the liquidationist. In these very trying times, one is either that or a Keynesian, Hoover’s supposed opposite, an interventionist who believes there is no good in any recession or deflation at any time. To “prove” the superior foundations of the latter, the ideological associates of that [...]
Although he didn’t state it specifically in his November 2010 Washington Post op-ed formally justifying QE2, it was very clear that then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke intended it to work through lending and especially the bank channel. Though he doesn’t explain, nor has any official ever, why a second one was needed given that the first was “quantitatively” determined, Bernanke was [...]
Real average weekly earnings for the private sector fell 0.6% year-over-year in January. It was the first contraction since December 2013 and the sharpest since October 2012. The reason for it is very simple; nominal wages remain stubbornly stagnant but now a rising CPI subtracts even more from them. Consumers receive no significant boost to their incomes, but are starting [...]
Industrial Production in the United States was flat in January 2017, following in December the first positive growth rate in over a year. The monthly estimates for IP are often subject to greater revisions than in other data series, so the figures for the latest month might change in the months ahead. Still, even with that in mind, there is [...]
Factory orders rose 2.0% in December 2016 year-over-year (NSA), the fourth positive number in the last five months. In what is a perfect commentary on the sorrowful state of the economy, it was highest growth rate since September 2014. It seems increasingly likely that the manufacturing recession attached to the “rising dollar”, the one that created a near-recession for the [...]
For two years now, the ISM Chicago Business Barometer has not failed to disappoint. Whether you were bullish or bearish on the manufacturing sector, if you were frustrated by the index one month you needed only wait to the next, maybe two, to be turned around. The index value for October 2015 was 56.2, for example, but 48.7 the month [...]
Inventories in the fourth quarter rebounded rather sharply, at least in terms of how inventory is calculated as a contribution to GDP. The GDP version of inventory turned negative in Q2, and was only slightly positive in Q3. In the final quarter of 2016, however, the total change is preliminarily estimated to have been $51.1 billion. That isn’t quite back [...]
Gross Domestic Product for the fourth quarter of 2016 disappointed once again, which is to say that it was perfectly consistent. At just 1.856%, quarter-over-quarter, it was the fifth time out of the past six quarters less than 2%. Only last quarter where unusual export activity pushed GDP up was the growth rate anywhere close to what it should be [...]
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