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…
We can add China to the list of locations where the near euphoria about inflation rates is rapidly falling apart. This is an important blow, as the Chinese economy has been counted on to lead the world out of this slump if through nothing other than its own sheer recklessness. “Stimulus” was all the rage…
It is one of those things that will never be stated outright, nor does there exist the kind of unassailable proof that would convict in any legal sense. Regardless, monetary officials here and elsewhere are clearly trying to have it both ways. They know very well what is driving inflation rates upward of late, and…
Kevin Warsh was named to Fortune Magazine’s 2009 list of 40 Under 40. He had been the youngest ever appointed to the Federal Reserve Board when President Bush put forward his name in 2006. Having been a banker in the M&A area of Morgan Stanley, Warsh was reported to have been instrumental in acting the…
China’s trade statistics for April 2017 uniformly disappointed. They only did so, however, because expectations are being calibrated as if the current economy is actually different. It is instead merely swinging between bouts of contraction and low-grade growth, but so low-grade it really doesn’t qualify as growth. Positive numbers do get the mind racing, but…
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. Removing petroleum, imports rose instead 6.3% in March and just…
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…
Back in March 2015, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the policymaking body of the Federal Reserve, had a problem. In reality at that particular time they had a whole range of problems, but one in particular would set them on their current course. Their overarching task as they define it is to create or…
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. Across the…
In February 2000, the FOMC quietly switched from the CPI to the PCE Deflator as its standard for inflation measurement. There were various technical reasons for doing so, including the CPI’s employment of a geometric mean basis (which was in 2015 finally altered to a Constant Elasticity of Substitution formula). But it was one phrase…