There is absolutely no need whatsoever to pay any attention to what Janet Yellen says. There is even less call for parsing the increasingly ridiculous FOMC statement, particularly with regard to inflation where it will continue to suggest “professional forecasters” are the only way (left) to measure monetary policy effectiveness. Instead, four times a year the FOMC meeting coincides with [...]
For the fifteenth consecutive month dating back to November 2014, the US CPI remained less than 1.5%. While this was supposed to be the year where “transitory” effects of oil prices as well as “other” factors dissipated, only in January has the full CPI been above 1.1%. Much like the PCE Deflator, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, there is no [...]
It follows that if we find production dropping into a two-year slump, sales are likely the cause. Retail sales continue to be just as stuck as the rest of the economy, an economic limbo between growth and recession with far more of recession than growth. After suffering one of the worst months in July, retail sales bounced back in August [...]
Industrial production in the United States fell by 1.1% year-over-year in August, a slightly larger decline than the -0.6% estimated for each of the two months prior. August’s negative was the twelfth consecutive, marking a full year in slow but unusually persistent contraction at such a slope. The seasonally-adjusted peak was reached in November 2014, meaning that for almost two [...]
The worst month for the wholesale level of the supply chain during the Great Recession was May 2009, just at the tail end of the heaviest part. The amount of sales as well as the calculated decline has moved around somewhat over the years as revisions have rewritten the amplitudes and the ultimate depth of that event, but May 2009 [...]
Speaking yesterday in Reno, Nevada, San Francisco Fed President (and CEO) John C. Williams delivered remarks on the normalization of monetary policy. So as not to put the cart before the horse, Williams noted that first the economy must do so before the FOMC can even consider the same for their self-assigned tasks. I’ll start with a quick overview of [...]
Factory orders rose in July in seasonally-adjusted terms from a downward revised June level. As has been the case with a number of economic data points this summer, that was a drastically different result than the unadjusted comparison. Since only the narrowest monthly interpretation makes it into most commentary about the economy, let alone manufacturing, the headlines leave a lot [...]
The primary symptom of the economic malaise or depression that has developed since the Great Recession (which wasn’t a recession) is an economy that works less and thus earns less. Such a condition would suggest a shrunken system or at least vastly diminished potential. That much is well-established even in the orthodox literature though it isn’t ever talked about publicly. [...]
For October 2014, the ISM estimated that its Chicago Business Barometer was a blistering 66.2. Encompassing much of the Midwest and a good deal of auto and parts production, that level seemed to make sense. As any economist would say then, the US economy was on the verge of a breakout and according to the labor statistics maybe even one [...]
The massive wildfires in Alberta earlier this year had a tremendously negative effect upon not just the oil sector but all of Canada. Not surprisingly, Canadian GDP released today was abysmal. Falling 1.6% in Q2, that was the worst quarter since 2009. Fortunately for the Bank of Canada who had been “stimulating” again since last July when it cut the [...]
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