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Rail Week Ending 17 September 2016: Data Looks Better This Week Week 37 of 2016 shows same week total rail traffic (from same week one year ago) contracted according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR) traffic data. However, the data was an improvement over last week. Not looking so good: This one’s coming down as well: September 23, 2016: Highlights The FRBNY Staff Nowcast stands at 2.3% and 1.2% for 2016:Q3 and 2016:Q4, respectively. Negative news since the...

from Maria Alejandra Madi From the 1950s onwards, the macroeconomic models of the neoclassical synthesis, based a system of simultaneous equations, focused on the interaction between the market for goods and services and the money market in the context of a general equilibrium analysis. According to John Hicks (1904-1989),  in the general case, the capitalist economy is at full employment level of output.  The underlying employment theory is based on the demand and supply of labour in a...

from David Ruccio Last week, to judge by the commentary on the latest Census Bureau report, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2015 (pdf), you’d think the fountain of broadly shared economic prosperity had just been discovered. Binyamin Appelbaum is a good example:   Americans last year reaped the largest economic gains in nearly a generation as poverty fell, health insurance coverage spread and incomes rose sharply for households on every rung of the economic ladder, ending years...

Also down and a bit lower than expected: United States Manufacturing PMI The flash Markit manufacturing PMI for the United States declined to 51.4 in September of 2016 from 52 in August and below market expectations of 51.9. New business growth eased further, output slowed and export orders fell for the first time in four months while payrolls increased.

Better, apart from employment and prices, which happen to be the Fed’s mandate. So interesting that the KC Fed President wants to hike rates: Highlights Just about every month the Kansas City manufacturing index is in the negative column, but not in September which comes in at plus 6 for the second positive reading this year and the best reading since December 2014. New orders are sharply higher, at plus 12 vs August’s minus 7 with backlogs holding steady. Production and...

So growth and employment prospects are lower than those of their prior meeting, when they didn’t raise rates. And their forecasts continue to decelerate: Fed Trims Interest-Rate, Growth Forecasts By Michael S. Derby Sept 21 (WSJ) — Federal Reserve officials cut their growth forecast for this year to 1.8%, from 2.0% in June, and held steady their view for next year at 2.0%. Notably, they lowered their long-run view on the economy’s growth rate to 1.8% from 2%. In their...

from David Ruccio The other day, I argued (as I have many times over the years) that contemporary mainstream macroeconomics is in a sorry state. Mainstream macroeconomists didn’t predict the crash. They didn’t even include the possibility of such a crash within their theory or models. And they certainly didn’t know what to do once the crash occurred. I’m certainly not the only one who is critical of the basic theory and models of contemporary mainstream macroeconomics. And, at least...

So much for last week’s glimmer of hope: Back down to recession levels:

from David Ruccio According to the norms of both neoclassical economic theory and capitalism itself, workers’ wages should increase at roughly the same rate as their productivity.* Clearly, in recent years they have not.  The chart above, which was produced by B. Ravikumar and Lin Shao for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, shows that labor compensation has grown slowly during the recovery of the U.S. economy from the 2007-09 recession. In fact, real labor compensation per hour in...

from Dean Baker Last week marked the eighth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the huge Wall Street investment bank. This bankruptcy sent financial markets into a panic with the remaining investment banks, like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, set to soon topple. The largest commercial banks, like Citigroup and Bank of America, were not far behind on the death watch. The cascade of collapses was halted when the Fed and Treasury went into full-scale bailout mode. They lent...