Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

by Joseph Joyce The Changing Nature of FDI The OECD has published its data on flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) for the first half of 2019. They reveal how multinational firms are responding to the slowdown in global trade and the U.S.-Chinese tariffs. They may also reflect longer-term trends in FDI as multinationals reconfigure the scope of their activities. Overall global FDI flows fell by 20% in the first half of the year as compared to the...

The ARAMCO IPO Stumbles Out The Door Finally after numerous delays, the potentially largest Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock has finally become for fully state-owned ARAMCO in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).  MOst of the delays had involved an unwillingness by the Saudi royal family to publicize financial and other factual details about the company, although issuing an IPO for 5 percent of the company was a part of the Vision 2030 plan of Crown...

Has Tyler Cowen or John Cochrane Ever Heard of Monopsony Power? I’m going to replicate one portion of a long winded rant about alleged cognitive dissonance: The argument for a minimum wage is that labor demand is inelastic — employers will hire the same number of workers. They will just absorb the higher wages or pass along the costs to customers. Workers get all the benefit. If labor demand is elastic, employers cut back on the number of employees. Of...

October jobs report paints a portrait of a full (or nearly full) employment economy HEADLINES: +128,000 jobs added (+148,000 ex-Census) U3 unemployment rate up +0.1% from 3.5% to 3.6% U6 underemployment rate up +0.1% from 6.9% to 7.0% Leading employment indicators of a slowdown or recession I am highlighting these because many leading indicators overall strongly suggest that an employment slowdown is coming. The following more leading numbers in the...

The consumer / employment sector of the economy continues powering along ….. aaaaand, I’m back. Did you miss me? Here is the essence of my view of the economy right now: 1. The producer sector of the economy is struggling, partly due to higher interest rates in the last two years filtering through the system, and partly due to stupid and irrational trade wars. 2. The consumer + employment sector of the economy, on the other hand, is moving right along,...

Dear Readers,  Commenters, and Bears, Bill and I are looking for an additional editor:  a participant in running the Angry Bear site and interact with contributors and readers to encourage responses and moderate threads as administrator add consistent points of view in posts and finding topics to supplement contributors efforts, become knowledgeable with the administration of our site ranging from problem solving WordPress to registrations like Go-daddy,...

Manufacturing still weak I’m still traveling this morning, but for now let me just note that this morning’s durable goods orders showed a decline again: Figure 1 Manufacturing is flat to slightly contracting. The consumer, primarily thanks to lower mortgage rates, is keeping the economy going.

by New Deal democrat The divergent nowcast and one model’s forecast at Seeking Alpha Over 10 years ago I found a good, quick-and-dirty way of looking at the Index of Leading Indicators. It only matters at turning points, which means, for the first time since the 2015-16 “shallow industrial recession,” it’s worth looking at now. That, plus a concise look at the bifurcation in the producer vs. consumer economy as it stands now, is a post I’ve put up over...

An Increasingly Divergent US Economy Lots of people have been huffing and puffing about whether or not the US economy will go into a recession in the near future, with Menzie Chinn and Jim Hamilton at Econbrowser saying it is now about 50-50 whether or not the US economy will go into recession by the end of 2020.   I do not have a horse in that race, but I am struck that a new odd phenomenon has recently appeared in the US economy, a split between...

Positive housing, initial claims, and Philly Fed outweigh negative industrial production So, after a nearly empty week until now, there were four economic reports this morning. Three of them were good. First, although overall housing starts and permits declined, single family permits, the most forward looking and least volatile of the metrics, were only 3000 off a new  expansion high (red in the graph below, vs. multi-family permits): Housing’s...