Consumer Confidence Heads The Wrong Way
The Conference Board’s reading on consumer confidence 46.6 for July, down from an unrevised figure of 49.3 in June. Bloomberg had the consensus reading pegged at 50.0, and it also noted that the lowest…
Economy
All Economy Articles
Newest first · Page 383The Era Of Layoffs Gets Renewed Vigor
Analysts have hoped that the rate at which Americans become unemployed will slow in the second half of 2009. There has been some evidence that the period in which the economy would lose 600,000 or…
Why The Public Hates The Fed
The idea of Fed chairman Bernanke at a town hall meeting being covered by PBS made some Washington observers shudder. Others just assumed that Bernanke wanted to take a victory lap around the country…
Bernanke TV
For reasons that will probably always remain a mystery to the broader public, Fed chair Bernanke went to Kansas City this past weekend to defend his record at a town hall meeting covered by…
Trading The Minimum Wage For Inflation
The federal minimum wage gets a boost to $7.25 an hour today, a move that may hurt the low-wage earners the Obama administration is trying to help. The result may help send us back…
Dow 14,000
The media made a big deal of the fact that the DJIA rose above 9,000 for the first time in nearly eight months. The index was under 6,550 in early March, do the advance…
Some Green Shoots In Leading Indicators
Leading Economic Indicators from the Conference Board is a bit of a misnomer, mainly because by the time the report comes out we generally have seen bits and pieces of more than half of…
Roubini Is Always Right
Celebrities cannot be misquoted. They have been in the public spotlight for too long. Anything that they say is just a thin epidermis on top of the thick layer of their work and personalities.…
FOMC Minutes Don’t Add Up
The Fed released the notes of the Federal Open Market Committee and Board of the Governors of the Federal Reserve joint meeting on June 23rd and 24th. The two major conclusions from this meeting…
FOMC Minutes Hint At Exit Strategy
Usually FOMC minutes do not matter so much because much of the data is known or assumed, but when monetary policies are in the midst of an inflection point or soon to change they…
Bank of Japan Looking Recession-Lite
The Bank of Japan has made a economic projection that has at least a bit of cautious optimism. While it is not declaring the recession entirely over, the BOJ kept rates at 0.10% and…
Caveats Confuse the June PPI & Retail Sales Data
Producer Price and Retail Sales are out for the month of June, and there is some good news and some bad news. Those prices look higher on the surface, with a caveat. And Sales…
Federal Government Psychics Forecast The Future Job Market
Forecasting is the meticulous brother of optimism. The Administration is still determined to create or retain 3.5 million jobs by the fourth quarter of 2010 through its $787 billion in stimulus spending, according to…
The Tax-less Recovery
It is now old news that the Treasury has reported that the US budget gap for June was just over $94 billion which compares with a surplus of over $33 billion in the same…
Will June PPI Even Be Relevant?
Tuesday’s report on the Producer Price Index used as the gauge against wholesale inflation may mark one of the more important trader events outside of earnings. But there is a serious question on whether…