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 [...]
In 1967, the US Personal Savings Rate averaged just a little more than 12%. That was pretty consistent with consumer behavior observed throughout the decades before, and the one that followed. What that meant, in terms of economic theory, was that if you as a central bank intended to accelerate the economy via the manipulation of expectations you at least [...]
The Personal Savings Rate is a rather important economic indication. Because it is derived from the difference between income and spending, it can tell us a great deal about the state of the economy from the consumer perspective. Unfortunately, nobody can say with any degree of confidence what the savings rate is right now, or even what it has been [...]
For Japan, the comparisons for March 2015 estimates are going to be tough as the yearly look-back aligns to March 2014 and the great surge prior to the tax increase. The distortive base effects make it more difficult to figure out just how little was gained (or lost) in spending and income. So the large granular declines are not suggestive [...]
Despite all evidence to the contrary, an imbalanced ledger of data that grows more imbalanced by the month, commentary continues to describe QE as pro-growth stimulus. As usual, the purest form of rebuke to that sentiment can be found in Japan where QQE has performed a global service just not in the way its theorists and practitioners had envisioned. The [...]
With the Chinese manufacturing indications “unexpectedly” disappointing over the weekend it was absolutely no surprise that US estimates of income and especially spending would as well. These overall, broader figures align closely with other indications of a dangerously weak household sector, very much explaining why the rest of the world is screaming about impending contraction. For all that intuitive sense [...]
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