The Bureau Labor Statistics reported today another huge month for Job Openings (JO). According to their methodology (which I still believe is flawed, but that’s not our focus this time), the level for October 2021 (JOLTS updates are for one month further back than payrolls) was a blistering 11.03 million. It wasn’t a record high, though, as that was set [...]
How much Mao is too much? If you’re like me, the answer is anything above zero. Introducing Maoism is quite like the adage of ice cream mixing dog poo; the former cannot improve the latter even a tiny drop. On the contrary, the smallest helping of feces leaves the whole thing smelling like it, rendered completely inedible no matter how [...]
OK, so we went through the ways and reasons consumer price increases are not inflation, cannot be inflation, are nowhere near actual inflation, and what all that really means. The rate they’ve gone up hasn’t been due to an overactive Federal Reserve, so it has to be something else. This is why, though the bulge has been painful, it’s already [...]
According to the movie The Princess Bride, the worst classic blunder anyone can make is to get involved in a land war in Asia. No kidding. The second is something about Sicilians and death. There is also, I’ve come to learn, an unspoken third which cautions against chasing down and then trying to break down seasonal adjustments in economic data.Some [...]
Those pesky base effects. For most of the world’s economic data, these have contributed much to creating the misimpression the global economy is doing well, if not on fire. By comparing data now (or a month ago) to the same a year earlier, boy can it look splendid. In the stock business, they’re called easy comps.The Chinese, however, have just [...]
Apparently, analysts were shocked when the Conference Board reported earlier today that its measure of consumer confidence, its own bread and butter, in the name, after all, dropped by a rather substantial eleven-plus points in August. And that was on top of a four-point downward revision to July. The new level of 113.8 compares to average expectations for ~124.0. Therefore, [...]
A tale of two retail industries. In the one, the well-known chip problem holding back what is already a monstrously robust (if artificial) sales environment. Automobile dealer lots are nearing empty and carmakers are unable (perhaps unwilling, too?) to produce near sufficient volumes to keep up let alone restock.This view of the situation, though, has clouded perspectives particularly as they [...]
You don’t hear about China’s “ghost cities” nearly as much anymore. Around 2012, thereabouts, suddenly social and regular medias alike were alive with pics of all sorts of empty buildings all around the vast urban Chinese landscapes. Unlike America’s Rust Belt, these spectral landmarks were brand new; built recently yet eerily unoccupied. Claimed to be a symbol of burgeoning asset [...]
Count retail sales (US) among the dead data. Like recent CPI’s and PPI’s, consumer spending on goods continues to be sky high – and yet markets (even stocks) don’t seem to care. For the month of June 2021, the Census Bureau believes total sales were up when compared to May, though not much as May’s estimate was revised lower. At [...]
Following the same recent pattern as the BLS and its CPI, the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s (BEA) PCE Deflator ran up hotter in May 2021 than its already high increase during April. The latter’s headline consumer basket rose 3.91% year-over-year, its fastest pace since August 2008. The core rate, which excludes food and energy prices, accelerated to 3.39% from 3.11%, [...]
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