Category: US Economy
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
US Downward Economic Spiral in Employment Market / Economics / US Economy
By: Mike_Shedlock
The New York Times is reporting Deepening Cycle of Job Loss Seen Lasting Into '09 .
Plummeting home prices have in recent months eliminated jobs for hundreds of thousands of people, from bankers and real estate agents to construction workers and furniture manufacturers.
“The labor market is clearly deteriorating, and it's highly likely to keep deteriorating,” said Andrew Tilton, an economist at Goldman Sachs. “It's clear that the housing downturn and credit crunch are still very much under way. Clearly, there are more jobs to be lost in housing, finance and construction — hundreds of thousands of more jobs to be lost collectively.”
Monday, June 30, 2008
Economic Forecasts and Analysis For US Financial Markets (June 30-July 4) / Economics / US Economy
By: Joseph_Brusuelas
The country may be celebrating its independence, but the markets will see a week of very important data and an address on the financial crises and the economy from the Fed and US Treasury. The major events of the week will be the publication of the June non-farm payrolls report on Thursday. Wednesday will see an address on the economy by US Treasury Secretary Paulson and a talk on the current global financial disruption by FOMC Gov. Mishkin. Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The Nondefense Market for Durable Goods - The Big Picture / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
Chart 1 shows that in May, shipments of durable goods excluding defense were down year-over-year 4.4%; new orders for the same were down 4.3%. Both started to soften in late 2006 when the tentacles of the housing recession began squeezing other sectors of the economy. The housing recession is taking its toll on the demand for discretionary consumer goods, which is reflected in the contraction in durable goods activity.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, June 20, 2008
US Recession Masked by the Fed Dumping Treasuries to Support Banking System / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
For the second month in a row, the Conference Board's index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) increased by 0.1% in May. And for the second month in a row, the interest spread between the yield on the 10-year Treasury security and the fed funds rate made a large positive contribution to the change in the LEI, 0.14 in April and 0.19 in May. All else the same, had it not been for the positive contributions from the interest spread component, the LEI would have contracted in April and May. Is there any reason to hypothesize that the spread component is biased upwards? Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
US Economy Hits the Canvas, Fed Expected to Keep Rates on Hold at 2% / Economics / US Economy
By: Mike_Whitney
The economy is in tatters. Consumer confidence has plummeted, food and energy prices are soaring, and the housing market is experiencing its biggest crash since the Great Depression. Manufacturing is down, unemployment is up, gasoline is topping $4 per gallon, and tent cities are sprouting up throughout the Southwest. If there's a silver lining to this mess; it's not visible from planet earth. Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, June 16, 2008
Economic Calendar Forecasts and Analysis: Week Ahead In US Financial Markets (June 16-20 2008) / Economics / US Economy
By: Joseph_Brusuelas
The market will observe a healthy amount of macroeconomic data to be released during the upcoming five trading days. The major data that have the capacity to move the market will be the release of the PPI and housing starts data for May, both of which will be released on Tuesday. Fed talk for the week will be light and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke will speak before a Senate committee on healthcare and US competitiveness on Monday. Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
The Next Big Federal Spending Spree / Politics / US Economy
By: John_Browne
As the economic indicators turn down and election year politics heats up, the calls from politicians for more government intervention and enhanced economic stimulus are becoming more strident. Last week, with the onset of the general presidential campaign, and with increased attention on the economy shown by the Bush administration, I could not help but think that something big was in the air. And by big, I mean the kind of massive new Federal spending initiatives that we haven't seen since the Great Society of the 1960's. Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Friday's US Employment Report and the Stock Market / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_J_Nolte
Friday's reaction to the employment report was somewhat of a surprise, given that fewer job losses were “created”, however what spooked everyone was the big jump in the unemployment rate. The report left a sour taste in investor's mouths, given the good news from the merger front (Verizon and Alltel) as well as good numbers from Wal-Mart (the “main” recipient of the rebate checks). Energy prices were in full retreat earlier in the week, but that reversed with a vengeance by the end of the week, as oil prices rose by their largest daily amount ever.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, June 09, 2008
Democrats and Recessions / Politics / US Economy
By: Gerard_Jackson
Now that Obama is the Democrats' contender for the presidency, they can resume their attacks on the US economy. These moral cretins have still got the effrontery to assert that the Bush economy is one of the worst in the country's history when that appellation should be awarded to the Roosevelt administration. (The second worst would be the Hoover administration).Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, June 06, 2008
May Jobs: US Unemployment Skyrockets to 5.5% Confirming Recession / Economics / US Economy
By: Mike_Shedlock
Yahoo!Finance is reporting Unemployment rate jumps to 5.5 percent in May .
The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 5.5 percent in May — the biggest monthly rise since 1986 — as nervous employers cut 49,000 jobs. The latest snapshot of business conditions showed a deeply troubled economy, with dwindling job opportunities in a time of continuing hardship in the housing, credit and financial sectors.
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Friday, June 06, 2008
The Spin On Jobs Statistics- Non-Farm Payrolls Friday / Economics / US Economy
By: Mike_Shedlock
Given that it takes 150,000 jobs to keep up with birthrate, anything under 100,000 jobs is a weak showing. Numbers under 50,000 are actually pathetic. However, it's easy to put a positive spin on things when expectations are in the gutter.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
US Living Standards and Productivity / Economics / US Economy
By: Gerard_Jackson
Boring as this might seem to some of our rightwing pundits, we can get no where in economic debate without the application of theory. Many of the questions that are popping up these days are linked to the alleged connection between productivity, unemployment and inflation. There are no links here in the functional sense. In a free market unemployment will not rise even where productivity is falling.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Stock Markets Marking Time Ahead of Real State of US Economy / Stock-Markets / US Economy
By: Paul_J_Nolte
The calendar turns another page and we dive headlong into summer with the hope/expectation that the government checks that have hit our accounts over the past few weeks will save us from the deep end of the debt pool. The reports last week provided little comfort that the economy is improving, as spending and income merely matched inflation – and the income number does include the rebate “income”. So for another month, the consumer is spending what they have and trying to keep pace with an ever-faster treadmill. Housing still looked poor, with the Case-Shiller index still showing lower housing prices. Little surprise that the consumer is feeling blue, with confidence at the lowest level in nearly 16 years.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, June 02, 2008
Are Subsistence Wages Killing The United States? / Economics / US Economy
By: Mike_Shedlock
I received an interesting Email last week from Minyan "MC" who is concerned about globalization's effect on jobs and wages. Let's tune in to his thoughts: There is a mania in this country to slash wages to a subsistence level (or worse). This is a symptom of the greed and corporate cronyism that is killing the country.
The powers-that-be that run the US are determined to crush wages, even when they realize that people are doing without food, health insurance, etc. We keep hearing news stories that about 10% of our population doesn't have sufficient food? The root cause is the mania to cut wages and lay off workers.
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Monday, June 02, 2008
Betting on Biggs and other Economic Predictions / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_Petillo
Some folks would like to call these days an inflection point. But that would be a prediction. The markets are going up, down and sideways in an unpredictable way and yet we are still trying to divine some semblance of normal where normal may not exist.
Douglas Noël Adams, the late author of the classic Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy suggested that, "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." But in days like these, where experience seems to be as passé as our dominance on the global economy, who do you listen to?
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Monday, June 02, 2008
Why Consumer Spending Won't Save the US Economy from Depression / Economics / US Economy
By: Gerard_Jackson
Regardless of the spiteful attempts of the Democrats and a corrupt media, the US economy is not going to sink into a depression. (When in 2000 Cheney observed, correctly, that the economy was in recession he was accused by the same corrupt media and the Democrats of trying "to talk down the economy"). Some economic commentators have stressed that based on a year-over-year basis GDP rose by 2.5 per cent in the first quarter of this year, most of it due the country's export boom.
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Saturday, May 31, 2008
US Economy Stuck in the Purple Haze of Stagflation / Economics / US Economy
By: Joseph_Brusuelas
With the economy caught somewhere in the purple haze between recession and anemic growth, many market prognosticators have been making the case that the worst is behind us.
With respect to the credit crisis, I do think that with the exception of a few nerve-rattling write-offs still to come, that is true. Credit spreads have begun to narrow, volatility measures seem to have settled down in recent weeks and the very unorthodox liquidity measures taken by the Fed appear to have calmed the nerves of market actors and appears to be in the process of pushing the market back towards something approximating normalcy.
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Monday, May 26, 2008
Bush Economic and Housing Boom was Fueled by Credit Expansion / Economics / US Economy
By: Gerard_Jackson
America's sluggish economy has the ever-so patriotic Democrats and their media playmates drooling over the prospect of a recession and rising unemployment. Those political activists who have the brazen effrontery to call themselves journalists have been gleefully drawing unfavourable comparisons between the economy under Bush and the Clinton boom, painting the former as a dreadful record of lousy growth, stagnant wages and tax cuts for the rich.
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Friday, May 23, 2008
Financial Markets Behind the Curve as Consumer Spending Acts as Leading Economic Indicator / Economics / US Economy
By: Joseph_Brusuelas
The past two quarters have seen anemic 0.6% rates of growth and we expect that personal consumption for the advance Q1'08 growth report will advance 1.0%, which would be the weakest three months of personal consumption since the beginning of the 2001 recession.
The primary catalyst behind the subpar performance has been the steep increase in headline costs. The price of domestically produced gasoline has increased 20.7% and the cost of food has risen 5.1% over the past year. This has eroded what little increase in wages that consumers have seen as the business cycle has come to an end.
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Monday, May 19, 2008
Getting Real with GDP and Government Inflation Adjustments / Economics / US Economy
By: Michael_Pento
With the release of last week's Consumer Price inflation numbers, the debate over the accuracy of the government's reported Consumer Price Index data was once again front and center. The official numbers showed that the overall rate of consumer inflation rose .2% while the over-hyped core rate rose just a paltry .1%.
However, these incredible April numbers were the result of a seasonal adjustment that removed much of the increase in gasoline prices. Unbelievably, the report claimed that consumer's energy costs were unchanged while the actual price of crude oil rose about 12.5% and gas prices rose 11% during the same period in question—that's some adjustment!
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