The frightening possibility that the US economy, and the world with it, remains still bound by a single “cycle” dating back to at least 2007 (and you could even argue 2000 or 1995) brings with it nothing good about future prospects. If 2009 wasn’t really the ultimate end then that would mean the true trough is still to be found. [...]
It wasn’t supposed to be the case that China would steal all the attention from Japan. We are only a few days away from QQE’s second anniversary and all expectations were purposely set to be a full-blown revival by now. The dedication and skill with which the Japanese economy was handled was meant to conclusively demonstrate with no debate that [...]
In contrast to the franc, the Danish krone continues to ignore ongoing speculation. The latest has seen rumors of not just direct buying by Danmarks Nationalbank but now even full-blown capital controls. Before yesterday, the krone had traded at or near 7.444 to the euro for 20 consecutive trading days; now surging today. In other words, the Danes don’t have [...]
Japan’s GDP grew by 2.2% in Q4 but that was far less than the 3.7% expected by economists. As a whole, consumer spending and business investment remained quite weak, “unexpectedly” so, confounding interpretations that Japan was heading in the right direction after its brief, sharp slump. Japan’s economy pulled out of recession more slowly than expected last quarter, with soft [...]
At the same time the Bank of Japan cut its outlook for “inflation” last month, seriously violating the standard set at the beginning of QQE to meet its target within 2-years, they also raised their growth predictions for the coming fiscal year (starting in April). Nobody seems to have appreciated the irony of that since almost all of the increase [...]
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Janet Yellen’s old institution, has made a habit of breaking with orthodox trends and actually citing and disclosing deficiencies in economic study. In its latest effort, the bank channels a bit of Stanley Fischer and states the obvious, or what everyone else has known for a long time: Over the past seven years, [...]
Even Harley Davidson is against the “strong dollar” at this point, which I think says a lot about how financialism has destroyed even this most basic sense of “money.” For the record, Harley’s profit was down “slightly” with the company of course blaming the “dollar.” The toothpaste business has also been seriously affected, afflicting Colgate where Latin America is a [...]
Japan has faded from the front page, but the economic disaster continues to bother. The Bank of Japan has been forced back from its first target “against” the “deflationary mindset” that launched QQE back in April 2013. The goal then was not to achieve 2% “inflation”, but rather a stable and sustained 2% rate. Needless to say, oil prices are [...]
The latest figures on housing construction have almost flipped the circumstances from late 2013. It was apartment construction that kept up hope that any retrenchment in single family construction would not be so devastating. Permit and start activity was, at the margins, almost totally dependent on multi-family construction to offset weakness in single homes. As of December 2014, the flattening [...]
In commentary about Shinzo Abe’s overwhelming re-election last week, there was a growing sense of divergence between rhetoric and support. Clearly, Abe’s administration had the nearly full support of the Japanese people, a fact due more than anything to the manner in which “economics” is not just reported but understood. In describing the looming track of a worse recession from [...]
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