Tag Archives: Uncategorized

The chart shows both how depressed the mortgage market is historically as well as how it’s been deteriorating over the last several months: And lots of headlines like this popping up: Wednesday, August 17, 2016Sacramento Housing in July: Sales down 7%, Active Inventory down 10% YoYLas Vegas Real Estate in July: Sales down 10% YoY, Inventory down 1% Read more at http://www.calculatedriskblog.com U.S. companies’ stock buyback plans hit four-year low: TrimTabs Aug 16...

from David Ruccio Is education the solution to the problem of growing inequality? As I wrote in early 2015, Americans like to think that education is the solution to all economic and social problems. Including, of course, growing inequality. Why? Because focusing on education—encouraging people to get more higher education—involves no particular tradeoffs. More education for some doesn’t mean less education for others (at least in principle). And providing more education doesn’t involve...

from Maria Alejandra Madi The global scenario has restated the menace of deep depressions among the economic challenges. Indeed, in the current setting, the principles of corporate behaviour have reinforced the lack of commitment to long-run social and economic sustainability. Looking backward, in the context of the 1930 Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes pointed out that the evolution of capital markets increases the risk of speculation and instability since these markets are mostly...

Lots of nuances but still tending to keep the Fed on hold: HighlightsThe headlines for the consumer price report look very soft but there are important offsetting pressures. The CPI came in unchanged in July, pulled back by a 1.6 percent monthly decline in energy prices and other weakness including flat prices for food and contraction in transportation. And it doesn’t look much better when excluding food & energy where the gain for the core is only 0.1 percent. But two...

Just another bit of bad news: HighlightsThe New York region’s manufacturing sector remains flat based on the Empire State index which came in slightly below zero at minus 4.21 in August vs plus 0.55 in July. New orders are especially flat, at plus 1.04 vs July’s minus 1.82, with unfilled orders extending a long run of negative readings at minus 9.28. There is, however, strength in shipments, at 9.01, but it won’t last long given the weakness in orders. Employment is also...

from Peter Radford Last week I stirred up a certain curiosity as to why I had lumped Peter Drucker into the same bag as both von Mises and Hayek. Well, simply put, the three of them, along with Karl Popper and Joesph Schumpeter, had an enormous, even oversized, impact on modern economics. Yes economics. Let’s not fall into the same trap as economists do when they, with a sweep of their hands, dismiss business theory as not an aspect of economics. Of course it is. After all if business is...

Still decelerating ever since the collapse in oil capex:

from David Ruccio The world economy only grew by 3.1 percent in 2015. But the world’s billionaires did much better. As David Barks, associate director of custom research for Wealth-X, understands, “Wealth helps accumulate more wealth.” According to the latest Wealth-X report on the global billionaire population, the world’s billionaire population grew by 6.4 percent, to 2,473, last year. And their combined wealth increased by 5.4 percent, to a record $7.7 trillion.   Needless to say, the...

Nothing here to get the Fed concerned about inflation: Not good, less then expected and excluding autos, a ‘core reading’ even worse. Seems to me that perhaps the higher gas prices that caused the increases over the last couple of month’s have taken their toll on other spending. And at the macro level, without an increase in either private or public deficit spending top line growth won’t be there: HighlightsConsumers spent their money on vehicles in July but not on much else...

The euro area trade surplus in general seems to be continuing, even as global trade weakens. Fundamentally this removes net euro financial assets from global markets that were sold by portfolio managers. Those managers include central bankers proactively selling their euro reserves over the last two years or so to buy US dollars, which has in turn kept the euro low enough to drive the surplus: