It’s not surprising that the Census Bureau would report another weird sideways trend in wholesale sales. After all, the agency has already produced that kind of pattern in the related data for durable goods. For reasons that aren’t going to be explained, economic activity across the supply chain from producers to consumers has been curtailed. That hasn’t mean outright shrinking [...]
It’s so obscure now, I actually had to go back and reread what was going on there at the time. On May 29, the mainstream consensus was how Italian populists were screwing up Europe. Global bond markets were supposed to be selling off, massacred as global recovery took hold. Instead, worldwide the most liquid, safe instruments had been hugely bid [...]
Wholesale sales, seasonally adjusted, bounced back moderately in February 2018 after a sharp decline (revised even lower) in January. Sales in the latest monthly figures are left still lower than in December and only slightly more than in November. This is the familiar aftermath of Harvey and Irma’s aftermath. Unadjusted, year-over-year wholesale sales increased by just 6.9%. As the storm [...]
Wholesale sales were up 10% year-over-year in January. But like every other economic account, the bulk of those gains were registered in the aftermath of Harvey and Irma. Seasonally-adjusted, wholesale sales predictably declined in January. Compared to other data points like imports, it’s literally the same pattern. Petroleum sales do account for a lot of the increase, however. In August [...]
Industrial Production benefited from a hurricane rebound in October 2017, rising 2.9% above October 2016. That is the highest growth rate in nearly three years going back to January 2015. With IP lagging behind the rest of the manufacturing turnaround, this may be the best growth rate the sector will experience. Production overall was still contracting all the way to [...]
Liquidity and more so liquidity preferences are vastly misunderstood for a whole host of reasons. A lot of it has to do with the dominant strains of Economics battling each other (saltwater vs. freshwater) over which statistical model fails less frequently. In shifting to mathematics and statistics, something great has been lost. Economists don’t understand how an economy works; and [...]
Last week the Commerce Department reported wholesale sales in June 2017 had risen by 5.6% year-over-year (unadjusted). Having increased by nearly 10% in May, and by the most in five years in January, 5.6% was instead the same kind of 2014 disappointment that is becoming far too common. These growth figures include petroleum sales on the wholesale level, meaning that [...]
In the same way as durable goods orders and US imports, wholesale sales in May 2017 were up somewhat unadjusted but down for the third straight month according the seasonally-adjusted series. As with those other two, the difference is one of timing. In other words, combining the two sets, seasonal and not, we are left to interpret a possible recent [...]
The recession of 1980 stands out in US economic history. It was by several measures a severe contraction, yet it only lasted a very short while. Contemporarily, it was believed to have been limited to just parts of two quarters. The current estimates describe it as a total of seven months from January to July 1980. That stands in sharp [...]
Wholesale sales rose 5.3% in February 2017 year-over-year after jumping by more than 12% in January on oil effects. Like calculated inflation rates, wholesale sales are for now marginally determined by energy price comparisons as well as calendar effects. February 2017 had one fewer day than February 2016, which according to the Census Bureau’s seasonal adjustments played some significant role [...]
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