fbpx

Consumer

Macro: Retail Sales

By |2023-11-17T14:59:04-05:00November 17th, 2023|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Taxes/Fiscal Policy|

Retail sales make up about a quarter of GDP, so an important monthly number. I saw a lot of headlines saying this was a disappointing number. But that isn't the case, the print was actually good. Sequentially, expectations were low for this print because September 2023 and October of 2022 were so strong. The sequential number was expected at -.3% [...]

Macro: Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence

By |2023-10-31T19:40:12-04:00October 31st, 2023|Economy|

From the press release: The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Survey "US Consumer Confidence fell again in October." "Consumers remain pessimistic about the future--even as they continued to spend." "The Present Situation Index—based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions—declined to 143.1 (1985=100) from 146.2. The Expectations Index—based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions—fell slightly to [...]

WSJ: Spring Without Much Bounce

By |2014-07-11T14:53:41-04:00July 11th, 2014|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

You hear it repeated incessantly that the US economy is consumer-driven, and perhaps it is in some very narrow aspects. The idea, however, that consumption accounts for 70% of the economy is false, a figure derived from GDP calculations that include, among other artificial creations, an imputation for homeowner rent equivalence (BEA estimates how much a homeowner might pay themselves [...]

It Simply Doesn’t Add Up, Wages Edition

By |2013-08-30T13:58:56-04:00August 30th, 2013|Markets|

Labor unrest is an expected feature of a malfunctioning economy. The 1970’s, for example, were rife with labor problems up and down the economic scale and across industries. Agitation for wage growth was proportional and directly attributable to the public’s perceived ability to maintain some standard of living. The Great Inflation threatened to leave a good deal of the populace [...]

Durable Goods – Same Story, Bad Relative Comps

By |2013-08-26T15:51:39-04:00August 26th, 2013|Markets|

Not really much different to report from the Durable Goods numbers. There is a curious near-stasis present in the trends and patterns in each of these data series. For some reason, they want to follow and match the Great Recession as if there existed an economic template or programmed auto-pilot – which would really confound policymakers since this is decidedly [...]

Trickle Down Isn’t Trickle Down Anymore

By |2013-03-20T10:31:11-04:00March 20th, 2013|Markets|

The justification of ZIRP/QE has been largely based, in the real economy outside subsidizing bank lending, on the premise that low interest rates stir additional or incremental borrowing. The distortion of the domestic economy in the United States since the mid-1970’s toward consumption in the household sector has been a function of this assumed dynamic. It remains the textbook approach [...]

Employment & Revisions

By |2012-12-07T16:26:05-05:00December 7th, 2012|Markets|

The headline in the Establishment survey was quite a bit better than expected, but once again it was at odds with most of the rest of the employment report. The Household survey fell by 122,000 reported jobs, while 350,000 people left the labor force. The number of estimated persons not in the labor force rose to an all-time high of [...]

Go to Top