Tag Archives: Uncategorized

Jamie Galbraith has written an excellent letter to the four former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton and Obama regarding their letter to Professor Gerald Friedman and Senator Bernie Sanders. The full text is below. February 18, 2016 I was highly interested to see your letter of yesterday’s date to Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald Friedman. I respond here as a former Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee – the congressional counterpart to the CEA....

Looks like the lower oil prices have not increased US demand:Interview: Warren Mosler (Federal Reserve And OECD) First, CPI is historically very low. Second, the deflationary influence of lower energy prices is still working its way through the economy. Third, the chart looks to me like it’s still working it’s way lower Fourth, core CPI is useful as a forecasting tool but the Fed’s mandate is headline inflation: Y/Y: Consumer Price IndexHighlightsConsumer prices are on the rise and the...

This is supported by increases in inventories that were already too high and likely to either be revised down or followed buy large declines for the rest of Q1. The retail sales number is also suspect and likely to revert to lower numbers: The Myth Of The Resilient Consumer By Lakshman AchuthanThe premise of incomes powering a consumer-driven pickup in U.S. economic growth is demonstrably false. And for people renting their homes the squeeze is even greater.One clue is the extent of the...

Retail SalesHighlightsVehicles are back on top, helping to lift retail sales to a 0.2 percent gain in January. Excluding vehicles and pulled down by falling gas prices, sales inched only 0.1 percent higher. But retail sales excluding gasoline stations — which is a central reading given the price fall — are up 0.4 percent for a very respectable year-on-year gain of 4.5 percent. The reading excluding both autos and gasoline is also up 0.4 percent in the month for a year-on-year rate of plus...

William K. Black February 12, 2016     Bloomington, MN The Bank Whistleblowers United announce the inaugural Financial Fraud Lemons of the Week award.  There can be no more fitting recipient than the ironically named Department of Justice (DOJ).  The “lemon” is used in the economics and criminology literature to refer to a car of surpassingly terrible quality.  The quality is so bad that the car can only be sold through fraud.  We will award it each week to an example of dishonesty or...

The New York Times has taken notice of Bank Whistleblowers United (BWU). You can read it here. [Translate]

No bounce this week for purchase apps: Goldman Sachs Abandons Five of Six ‘Top Trade’ Calls for 2016 By Rachel Evans and Andrea WongFeb 9 (Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs to clients: whoops. Just six weeks into 2016, the New York-based bank has abandoned five of six recommended top trades for the year.The dollar versus a basket of euro and yen; yields on Italian bonds versus their German counterparts; U.S. inflationexpectations: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was wrong on all that and more.

And another bad one as sales are falling just as fast as inventories: Wholesale TradeHighlightsWholesale inventories fell an as-expected 0.1 percent in December with November revised 1 tenth lower to minus 0.4 percent. Wholesalers have been liquidating inventories as sales have been falling, down 0.3 percent in the latest month following a 1.3 percent sales decline in November. And they’ve been successful, keeping down the stock-to-sales ratio at 1.32 the last two reports which is still...

Looks to me like some a bit higher but some a bit lower as well, which tells me the ongoing policy of ‘excess’ discounts remains in place:Nothing here to indicate spending this year will be any better than last year:This is largely student loans:

As previously discussed, the numbers are showing that business is hiring more than output is increasing, which doesn’t seem to make sense to me. That is, it wouldn’t surprise me to see this reconciled by a drop in hiring, or a downward revision to employment in general. Productivity and CostsHighlightsFlat output and a rise in hours worked combined to sink fourth-quarter productivity to an annualized rate of minus 3.0 percent. The Econoday consensus was minus 1.8 percent with the low...