The concept of an economic “false dawn” was almost entirely unfamiliar to the postwar US experience. We came close in 2002 and the first half of 2003, but eventually the housing bubble era took over. The dot-com recession was mild, sure enough, somehow, though, recovery seemed so elusive for a longer period than the contraction itself. There is supposed to [...]
In August 2014, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen described the wage dilemma in some detail. She was still relatively new to the job at that time, and there was pressure on her from among the so-called hawks to more aggressively normalize monetary policy. Ben Bernanke had taken the more cautious approach having experienced what both he and Yellen would afterward [...]
Beginning with its very first issue in May 1915, the Federal Reserve’s Bulletin was the place to find a growing body of statistics on US economic performance. Four years later, monthly data was being put together on the physical volumes of trade. From these, in 1922, the precursor to what we know today as Industrial Production was formed. The index [...]
There are two possibilities with regard to stubbornly weak US imports in 2017. The first is the more obvious, meaning that the domestic goods economy despite its upturn last year isn’t actually doing anything positive other than no longer being in contraction. The second would be tremendously helpful given the circumstances of American labor in the whole 21st century so [...]
Inside the advance third quarter GDP report, the details in most of the important categories suggested slowing after two quarters consistent with “reflation” at least in its third try. If the economy swings between shallow downturns and often shallower upturns, these subcategories give us some insight as to why. Overall, growth remains at a level that is not growth, whether [...]
Baseball Hall of Famer Frank Robinson also had a long career as a manager after his playing days were done. He once said in that latter capacity that you have to have a short memory as a closer. Simple wisdom where it’s true, all that matters for that style of pitching is the very next out. You can forget about [...]
Liquidity and more so liquidity preferences are vastly misunderstood for a whole host of reasons. A lot of it has to do with the dominant strains of Economics battling each other (saltwater vs. freshwater) over which statistical model fails less frequently. In shifting to mathematics and statistics, something great has been lost. Economists don’t understand how an economy works; and [...]
A number of people have forwarded this Bloomberg article - Wall Street Banks Warn Downturn Is Coming - to me over the last couple of days. That fact alone is probably a good argument to ignore it but I can't help but read articles like this if for no other reason than to know what the crowd is thinking. The [...]
Last week the Commerce Department reported wholesale sales in June 2017 had risen by 5.6% year-over-year (unadjusted). Having increased by nearly 10% in May, and by the most in five years in January, 5.6% was instead the same kind of 2014 disappointment that is becoming far too common. These growth figures include petroleum sales on the wholesale level, meaning that [...]
The Asian flu of the late 1990’s might have been more accurately described as the Asian dollar flu. It was the first major global test of the mature eurodollar system, and it was a severe disruption in the global economy. It doesn’t register as much here in the United States because of the dot-com bubble and the popular imagination about [...]
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