Right now, everything comes down to the labor market. Does the US economy hang on despite stubborn and evidently non-transitory overseas turmoil cross currents? Or do American consumers rightly confident of the economic situation re-assert themselves via their wallets and deliriously spend the economy back on track? You better believe Fed Chairman Jay Powell will [...]
Where things stand right now is actually a pretty simple matter. How and why everything might change, as well as how and why we got here, those are more complex issues which depending upon your understanding may not lead to a clear picture of conditions. Right now, we are told, there will be just the [...]
The Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index (NAI) fell to -0.36 in July. That’s down from a +0.10 in June. By itself, the change from positive to negative tells us very little, as does the absolute level below zero. What’s interesting to note about this one measure is the average but more so its rate of [...]
The entire basis for what the Fed is now calling a “mid-cycle” adjustment rests upon a specific view of the labor market. There was weakness in consumer spending, there remains weakness in business investment, but none of these cross currents or headwinds are going to matter. Americans are experiencing robust employment conditions which when these [...]
Chairman Powell’s hawkishness, so called, has made its way into the historical revisions for Personal Income estimates. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released today the annual benchmark revisions to NIPA, the National Income and Product Accounts, which apply to Personal Income and Personal Spending. We’ve already seen the results for GDP and underlying data [...]
In February 2015, IHS Markit thought that the US manufacturing sector might be slowing quite against every expectation. Its final PMI reading for the month of January was 53.9, down quite a bit from highs registered in the middle of 2014. Some of those fears seemed put to rest the following month when the flash [...]
It’s been awhile since we’ve had any data on the US economy. With the federal government having been shut down, especially the Census Bureau, the figures have gone dark. The current short-term government reopening will lead to an eventual rush of estimates, perhaps a few series that will be updated two months at a time. [...]
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