Public construction spending has rebounded since July last year on what looks to be storm-related cleanup costs. The Census Bureau unfortunately does not break down total spending by geographic region, which, obviously, would clarify whether or not this has been the case. For now, absent also estimates for Q4 state and local tax collections, we will have to be content [...]
I can’t help but wonder what the CNBC author was going to write. It’s not a sentence I ever thought I would put down, but in this case the omission might have meant something. In reporting on auto sales yesterday, the article started out with the ultimate cliffhanger: Major automakers reported lower U.S. new vehicle sales for February on Thursday [...]
What do August 2008, August 2011, and January 2016 all have in common? In pop culture or mainstream news, I’m not sure you could find any consistent link between those precise periods. Even in economics, it’s not quite as uniform. Those were all forming or beckoning downturns, but all at somewhat different stages of them. More specifically along those lines, [...]
The parallels between the last few years and those at the end of the 1990’s are striking. There was a few years ago the monetary intrusion of the “rising dollar” which at its worst seriously depressed the global economy. Oil prices crashed, as did several key currencies, and deflationary pressures that often accompany a significant downturn were manifest. Starting in [...]
Residual seasonality isn’t a residual, but it is seasonal. The concept was introduced several years ago mostly because Economists were finally being embarrassed about their meteorological predilections. It had become common, far too common, to blame snow, cold, and general wintry like conditions during the winter. Thus, something else had to be brought forward to explain why what looked like [...]
In early September 2007, just a month after the eurodollar system broke and still weeks before the FOMC would finally see the need to do something, anything, private equity firm Carlyle Group added six new “senior investment professionals” intending on making investments in global banking and insurance. The timing was, well, suspect. Among those added to the firm was Randal [...]
Back in October, we noted the likely coming of two important distortions in global economic data. The first was here at home in the form of Mother Nature. The other was over in China where Communist officials were gathering as they always do in their five-year intervals. That meant, potentially: In the US our economic data for a few months [...]
Effective June 10, 2014, the European Central Bank cut the interest rate it paid on its deposit account to less than zero. That instrument in forming the floor for what is a money market corridor in European policy, it was the world’s first major NIRP experiment. Europe’s economy had by GDP been growing again for three straight quarters by then [...]
New orders for durable goods, excluding transportation industries, rose 9.1% year-over-year (NSA) in January 2018. Shipments of the same were up 8.8%. These rates are in line with the acceleration that began in October 2017 coincident to the aftermath of hurricanes Harvey and Irma. In that way, they are somewhat misleading. The seasonally-adjusted data gives a better sense of the [...]
Economic Reports Economic Growth & Investment We pay particular attention to broad based indicators of growth. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index and the Conference Board's Leading Economic Indicators are examples. We watch them because we are mostly interested in identifying inflection points in the broad economy and aren't as interested in the details. Why? Because, while bear markets do [...]
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