On April 1, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that its official PMI for the manufacturing sector had burst back above 50 for the first time since July 2015 before all the “global turmoil.” The NBS didn’t actually use the word “burst”, of course, as they simply reported the figure and economists and the media did the rest. It seemed [...]
In advance of today’s GDP release, it was expected that the Q2 estimate would be around 2.6% (it was only 1.2%). The major reason for the anticipated rebound was “strong” consumers, a theme that has been a part of the dominant economic narrative since 2014 introduced the phantom “best jobs market in decades.” No matter what happens in the economy, [...]
The advance estimate for second quarter GDP came in lower than expected. At just 1.211%, the anticipated rebound from the dreadful winter failed to materialize in any significant way. Worse, benchmark revisions now suggest that GDP has been around 1% for three straight quarters; Q4 2015 was revised down from 1.377% to just 0.869%; Q1 2016 was revised back 0.831%. [...]
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) will release its advance estimate for Q2 2016 GDP tomorrow, along with benchmark revisions that may render this entire discussion moot. By all expectations, GDP is believed to have rebounded from Q1’s 1.07% predicated on little more than that April through June was not nearly as bad as January through March. In fact, as [...]
Oil prices are like an unfolding train wreck, as it is nearly impossible to look away now. Day after day, not only are spot prices down but the entire WTI curve is now moving lower in almost perfect unison. Prices have dropped six days in a row, more than $4, and at just above $41 seems a much different world [...]
The seasonal spring rebound seems to have reset all the economic narratives. When economic accounts, along with financial markets, started to seriously slide toward the end of last year, for the first time even the mainstream began to admit, grudgingly, that weakness wasn’t just some remote happenstance that was a minor nuisance to an otherwise robust US economy. The idea [...]
Last July, the US Treasury Department finally issued its official report detailing its account of what happened on October 15, 2014. The statement was co-authored by staff at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, FRBNY, the SEC, and CFTC, as if the government were going overboard trying to prove its word the end of the matter. As [...]
There is a core fallacy at the heart of monetary policy (actually there are many, but I'll keep it to just this single instance for the sake of brevity), one that was exposed by Milton Friedman himself, though indirectly and quite accidentally related to how he proposed an alternate scenario for the Great Depression. His view was that the Fed by [...]
What happened in the period between 2007 and 2011 was the same that happened in 1930 and really 1931. The monetary “miracle” of the 1920’s was predicated on the same sets of inequalities and imbalances; revealed afterward in not just the crash that unwound the core processes but really in the lack of recovery that followed. We need only turn [...]
It seems as if the FOMC still doesn’t know what to make of itself. In June, the May payroll report released earlier that month clearly spooked them; not even Esther George bothered to dissent in favor a rate increase. Since then, the world seems so much better. The media tells us with every new economic release how “strong” the economy [...]
Stay In Touch