Category Archive: 5.) The United States

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Hopefully Not Another Three Years

2017-05-19

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2017-05-19

The Still-Shrinking 'Recovery'
The stock market has its earnings season, the regular quarterly reports of all the companies that have publicly traded stocks. In economic accounts, there is something similar though it only happens once a year. It is benchmark revision season, and it has been brought to a few important accounts already. Given that this is a backward looking exercise, that this season is likely to produce more downward revisions shouldn’t be surprising.

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Inflation Is Oil, But Inflation Is Much More Than Consumer Prices

2017-05-16

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2017-05-16

CPI Changes On Energy, January 2016 - May 2017
The average annual change in the WTI benchmark price was in April about 25%. That was still a sizable increase year-over-year, and just marginally less than March’s average of 33%. For calculated inflation rates, it represents the last of the base effects that have to this point made it appear as if economic improvement was possibly serious.

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Earnings Update – The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating

2017-05-16

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2017-05-16

S&P 500 Q117 Earnings Growth Rate, December 2016 - May 2017
The first quarter just seemed to zoom by this year, bringing continued optimism (or, animal spirits if you prefer) to the stock market and leaving even higher valuations in its wake. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index returned an impressive 6.07% for the quarter, on the tail of the previous five consecutive quarters of positive performance.

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Lackluster Trade

2017-05-14

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2017-05-14

US Imports, June 1989 - May 2017
US imports rose 9% year-over-year (NSA) in March 2017, after being flat in February and up 12% in January. For the quarter overall, imports rose 7.3%, a rate that is slightly more than the 2013-14 comparison. The difference, however, is simply the price of oil.

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The Wrong People Have An Innate Tendency To Stand Out

2017-05-12

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2017-05-12

Japan Government Bond Yields, January 1985 - May 2017
I don’t think Milton Friedman would have made much of chess player. For all I know he might have been a grand master or something close to that rank, but as much as his work is admirable it invites too the whole range of opposite emotion. He was the champion libertarian of the free market who rescued economics from the ravages of New Deal socialism, but in doing so he simply created the avenue for where Economics of that kind could be transposed...

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Noose Or Ratchet

2017-05-11

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2017-05-11

Quarterly Report On Bank Derivative Activities, April 1995 - April 2016
losing the book on Q4 2016 balance sheet capacity is to review essentially forex volumes. The eurodollar system over the last ten years has turned far more in this direction in addition to it becoming more Asian/Japanese. In fact, the two really go hand in hand given the native situation of Japanese banks.

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Auto Pressure Ramps Up

2017-05-10

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2017-05-10

Motor Vehicle Sales And Production, January 2011 - May 2017
The Los Angeles Times today asked the question only the mainstream would ask. “Wages are growing and surveys show consumer confidence is high. So why are motor vehicle sales taking a hit?” Indeed, the results reported earlier by the auto sector were the kind of sobering figures that might make any optimist wonder.

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Bi-Weekly Economic Review

2017-05-09

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2017-05-09

The economic reports since the last economic update were generally less than expected and disappointing. The weak growth of the last few years had been supported by autos and housing while energy has been a wildcard. When oil prices fell, starting in mid-2014 and bottoming in early 2016, economic growth suffered as the shale industry retrenched.

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This Is Not Expansion

2017-05-06

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2017-05-06

Real GDP Trends 2011-2017
Back in October, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released GDP figures that suggested what those behind “reflation” had hoped. After a near miss to start 2016, the economy had shaken off the effects of “transitory” weakness, mainly manufacturing and oil, poised to perform in a manner consistent with monetary policy rhetoric.

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Clickbait: Bernanke Terrifies Stock Investors, Again

2017-05-03

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2017-05-03

Unstable GDP Revised, April 2011 - April 2017
If you are a stock investor, you should be terrified. The most disconcerting words have been uttered by the one person capable of changing the whole dynamic. After spending so many years trying to recreate the magic of the “maestro”, Ben Bernanke in retirement is still at it.

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Defining Labor Economics

2017-05-02

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2017-05-02

Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, Dec 2000 - 2016
Economics is a pretty simple framework of understanding, at least in the small “e” sense. The big problem with Economics, capital “E”, is that the study is dedicated to other things beyond the economy. In the 21st century, it has become almost exclusive to those extraneous errands. It has morphed into a discipline dedicated to statistical regression of what relates to what, and the mathematical equations assigned to give those relationships some...

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Housing’s Echo Bubble Now Exceeds the 2006-07 Bubble Peak

2017-04-30

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2017-04-30

US S&P Case-Shiller SF Home Price Index, 1980 - 2017
A funny thing often occurs after a mania-fueled asset bubble pops: an echo-bubble inflates a few years later, as monetary authorities and all the institutions that depend on rising asset valuations go all-in to reflate the crushed asset class.

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‘Dollar’ ‘Improvement’

2017-04-29

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2017-04-29

US TIC Official Buying Of US Treasury Bonds And Notes, February 2013 - February 2017
According to the headline TIC statistics, foreign central banks have in the past six months sold the fewest UST’s since the 6-month period ended November 2015. That may indicate an easing of “dollar” pressure in the private markets due to “reflation” sentiment.

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Who Will Live in the Suburbs if Millennials Favor Cities?

2017-04-28

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2017-04-28

America's Economic Output
Who's going to pay bubble-valuation prices for the millions of suburban homes Baby Boomers will be off-loading in the coming decade as they retire/ downsize?Longtime readers know I follow the work of urbanist Richard Florida, whose recent book was the topic of Are Cities the Incubators of Decentralized Solutions?(March 14, 2017).

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To The Asian ‘Dollar’, And Then What?

2017-04-27

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2017-04-27

TIC - US Banking Data Claims On Foreigners, February 1979 - February 2017
The Bretton Woods system was intentionally set up to funnel monetary convertibility through official channels. The primary characteristic of any true gold standard is that any person who wishes can change paper claims into hard money. It was as much true in any one country as between those bound by the same legal framework (property).

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Our State-Corporate Plantation Economy

2017-04-26

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2017-04-26

US Productivity, 1980 - 2016
I have often discussed the manner in which the U.S. economy is a Plantation Economy, meaning it has a built-in financial hierarchy with corporations at the top dominating a vast populace of debt-serfs/ wage slaves with little functional freedom to escape the system's neofeudal bonds.

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Bi-Weekly Economic Review

2017-04-25

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2017-04-25

bi-weekly
It wasn’t a very good two weeks for economic data with the majority of reports disappointing. Most notable I think is that the so called “soft data” is starting to reflect reality rather than some fantasy land where President Trump enacts his entire agenda in the first 100 days of being in office. Politics is about the art of the possible and that is proving a short list for now.

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Money In America

2017-04-24

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2017-04-24

Economic Baselines in the Eurodollar Era, January 1993 - 2016
In 1830, France was once more swept up in revolution, only this time at the end of it was installed one king to replace another. Louis-Phillipe became, in fact, France’s last king as a result of that July Revolution. The country was trying to make sense of its imperial past with the growing democratic sentiments of the 19th century.

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Marx, Orwell and State-Cartel Socialism

2017-04-23

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2017-04-23

Denmark's Household Dept, 1996 - 2014
When "socialist" states have to impose finance-capital extremes that even exceed the financialization of nominally capitalist economies, it gives the lie to their claims of "socialism." OK, so our collective eyes start glazing over when we see Marx and Orwell in the subject line, but refill your beverage and stay with me on this. 

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Our Intellectual Bankruptcy: The “Religion” of Economics, UBI and Medicare For All

2017-04-23

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2017-04-23

Growth of Physicians and Administrators, 1970 - 2009
1. Mainstream neo-classical/ Keynesian economics. As economist Manfred Max-Neef notes in this interview, neo-classical/ Keynesian economics is no longer a discipline or a science--it is a religion. It demands a peculiar faith in nonsense: for example, the environment--Nature-- is merely a subset of the economy.

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