There was never really any answer given by the Chinese Communists for why their own export data diverged so much from other import estimates gathered by its largest trading partners. Ostensibly different sides of the same thing, it’s not like anyone asked Xi Jinping to weigh in; they report what numbers they have and consider them authoritative.However, the United States’ [...]
While the global inflation picture remains fixed at firmly normal (as in, disinflationary), US retail sales by contrast have been highly abnormal. You’d think given that, the consumer price part of the economic equation would, well, equate eventually price-wise. Consumers are spending, prices should be heading upward at a noticeable rate. To begin with, consumer spending – as pictured by [...]
Technically, by showing one decimal place maybe this doesn’t exactly qualify. Then again, I was only half serious. When Mexico’s government reported earlier this week that auto production fell by almost 100% in April, I wrote it was suggestive of the great possibly lingering difficulties being forecast for the other side of this economic dislocation. Automakers, basically, aren’t buying the [...]
It was another one of those good news, bad news data days in China. Unfortunately, the good news just doesn’t make much sense. That was Chinese exports which, according to the country’s General Administration of Customs, increased by 4.5% year-over-year in April 2020. Given the state of the world last month, exports were expected to drop by 12 to 14% [...]
Over the last decade, the US economy has been experiencing “residual seasonality.” It has begun each year unusually weak. For Economists expecting it take off in each and every one, this is more than a thorny contradiction. When it happened again in 2015, at the worst possible moment for the mainstream view, they had finally had enough. The Bureau of [...]
When I started in this business more than twenty years ago, I fully expected to be a profession investor in the purest sense of the term. I envisioned spending my days tearing apart corporate financials, especially balance sheets, and matching them to common sense expectations of new products and imaginative advances. It was the 1990’s, after all, and everything seemed [...]
Gap announced another round of store closings, about 175 this time which is a significant chunk of its once-leading asset base. The company’s struggles aren’t new, having closed 200 stores only back in 2011. Since Gap was one of the first businesses to sign on for a higher wage base, you have to wonder how much of that was simple [...]
Along with this morning’s atrocious retail sales report comes more bad news for economic statistics that have been at least clinging to the recovery narrative. My biggest complaint with the Establishment Survey is that I believe the BLS in constructing their measure of variability has been overly optimistic in its trend-cycle component. In the 1960’s and especially the 1970’s, economic [...]
At first glance, yesterday’s release of new home sales estimates defied any sense of sense. As such, it seemed better to simply let it alone until revisions attempt to address the extreme outlier results for February. However, after further review, there may be another factor to consider as to whether there is anything worthwhile rather than being wholly inappropriate. At [...]
The wholesale trade figures still confound both the “rebound” narrative and the drastic revisions of GDP made in July. The broader context of wholesale trade remains as it has been since early 2013, as although growth appears to be increasing it is doing so at a deficient rate. That counts for both inventory and sales, though there is, I believe, [...]
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