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labor market

Payrolls Like GDP: Headlines Good, Underneath Really, Really Not

By |2019-05-03T12:24:30-04:00May 3rd, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

If the unemployment rate reaches zero and wages still don’t explode higher, the economy falls off, will Economists, central bankers, and the media stop relying on this one statistic for overall economic interpretation? You can be reasonably excited when the unemployment rate falls below 5%, as it did four years ago. Three point six, however, that’s something else entirely. We’ve [...]

Auto Sales The Lowest In Half A Decade, Just Coincidence FCA Will Join Ford, GM Ditching Monthly Sales Estimates

By |2019-05-02T17:37:15-04:00May 2nd, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

FCA, formerly Fiat-Chrysler, is the latest automaker to switch from a monthly sales report. Joining GM and Ford, beginning in October all three of Detroit’s big car companies will be publishing quarterly sales figures. The announcement comes at an auspicious moment. As with the other two, FCA claims the change is being done in the name of transparency. Less reporting [...]

Not Only No Labor Shortage, Latest Labor Market Data Is Closer to Rate Cuts

By |2019-05-02T16:22:02-04:00May 2nd, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Yesterday, the FOMC altered its view of household spending and business capex. It wasn’t a huge difference, they never are. Figuratively, these sorts of downgrades are little by little even though if things were ever to go the right way the language upgrades wouldn’t be subject to so much reservation. There isn’t much in the official statements anyway, just a [...]

Labor Slowdown Already; Another Account Falls In Line of May 29

By |2019-04-11T16:41:00-04:00April 11th, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

May 29. May 29. May 29. It keeps showing up everywhere. Not only does it appear as an inflection on so many important market charts, we keep finding it in economic accounts, too. There is so much to corroborate what can only have been a real and striking event. This contrasts, of course, with the mainstream narrative. Last year the [...]

Payrolls: Fragile Friday

By |2019-04-05T12:24:27-04:00April 5th, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Milton Friedman was right about a lot of things. He was wrong about quite a bit, too. The stuff where he erred is what central banks now do in his name. The activist central bank is an outgrowth of monetarism, the academic approach to rethinking the Great Depression after Friedman and Anna Schwartz published A Monetary History. Toward the end [...]

Fed: We Are, Don’t Get Spooked, Very Happy With Things But We Are Going to Review Our Policies And Tools In the Very Small, Microscopic Chance We’ve Missed Something

By |2019-03-08T18:03:55-05:00March 8th, 2019|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Last August, the Senate confirmed Richard Clarida for both a position on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors as well as to be installed as its Vice Chairman. Clarida had been chairman of the Economics department at Columbia as well as working for PIMCO where he had served the investment company as its Global Strategic Advisor since 2006. You can [...]

Payrolls: Neither Good Nor Bad, Just More Uncertain

By |2019-03-08T12:27:07-05:00March 8th, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The BLS giveth, and the BLS taketh away. That’s not really what has happened, of course, but for many it can seem that way. February’s payroll report obviously stands in striking contrast to January’s. The latter was a blowout, over +311k (revised), hyped near and far as proof of decoupling, the US economy the only clean shirt. In comes the [...]

The Deeper Red of The (False) Dawn

By |2019-03-06T11:52:29-05:00March 6th, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

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 [...]

No Surprise, Hysteria Wasn’t a Sound Basis For Interpretation

By |2019-02-27T17:11:06-05:00February 27th, 2019|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

What gets them into trouble is how they just can’t help themselves. Go back one year, to early 2018. Last February it was all-but-assured (in mainstream coverage) that the US economy was going to take off. The bond market, meaning UST’s, was about to be massacred because the overheating boom would force a double shot down its throat. Not only [...]

The Global Reach of Kuroda’s Premature Celebrations

By |2019-02-22T13:00:56-05:00February 22nd, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The unemployment rate isn’t just misleading in the US, though the gap between what it suggests here and what isn’t happening is now enormous. This idea of a labor shortage, or LABOR SHORTAGE!!!! as each case may be, was itself as global as synchronized growth when it showed up in later 2017. There were stories about Chinese factories unable to [...]

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