Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Short leading indicators show slowdown, not recession (for now anyway) Amount 10 days ago, I wrote that backward revisions to adjusted NIPA corporate profits meant the long leading indicators were more negative than originally believed one year ago.  Which means that watching the short leading indicators for signs of rolling over became more important. I took a comprehensive look at the short leading indicators late last week. This post is up at Seeking...

(Dan here…better late than not) by New Deal democrat An extended look at jobless claims, and a note about payrolls Let’s take an extended look at jobless claims, with a side note about payrolls. First, I have started to monitor initial jobless claims to see if there are any signs of stress. My two thresholds are:1. If the four week average on claims is more than 10% above its expansion low. 2. If the YoY% change in the monthly average turns higher.Here’s...

Digital Sales Tax v. Tariffs on French Wine Even before Donald Trump departed for the G7 in Biarritz France, he threatened another trade war this time with the host country over the digital sales tax: U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday reiterated criticism of a French proposal to levy a tax aimed at big U.S. technology companies and threatened again to retaliate by taxing French wine. Speaking to reporters at the White House before leaving for a...

Not doomed yet v.2.0: beware recession porn Way back when I first started writing online almost 15 years ago, my very first post on Daily Kos was a little note called “Not Doomed Yet.”  It was pretty pathetic compared with the standards of my writing since the Great Recession, but the point of it was, back in 2005, that the conditions necessary for an economic downturn hadn’t quite happened yet. Needless to say, it went nowhere. To the contrary, my big...

Record Income Taxes? I should read more posts from Kevin Drum: The Yahoo News reporter comes close to explaining what happened by noting that there were more returns in 2018 than 2017. As you might guess, this happens every year as the US population increases. So let’s take a look at personal income tax receipts adjusted for inflation and population growth … In reality, income tax receipts were down 2.6 percent in 2018 compared to 2017. What this means,...

by New Deal democrat Why the revised Q2 GDP report next week may be the most important release in 10 years Last Thursday there were major backward revisions to unit labor costs. Since corporate profits deflated by unit labor costs are a long leading indicator, this had a big negative effect on the forecast for the next six months or so. Corporate profits for Q2 of this year will be released next week as part of the first revision of the GDP report, and...

Cheerleading for Austerity Not content to follow a news strategy that maximizes Trump’s prospects for re-election, the New York Times leads today with a story that combines economic illiteracy and reactionary scaremongering in a preview of what we’re likely to see in the 2020 presidential race. “Budget Deficit Is Set to Surge Past $1 Trillion” screams the headline, and the article throws around a mix of dollar estimates and vague statements about...

It is standard analysis to see real and nominal imports as a share of GDP quoted to estimate the importance of imports in the economy. Currently that shows nominal imports are about  15% of GDP and real imports are some 18% of real GDP. But I suspect that this comparison understates the role of imports in the economy because services are some 45% of GDP but only about 16% of imports.  As my high school algebra teacher was fond of saying, you are adding...

Industrial production, jobless claims, and retail sales As I noted this morning, a slew of important data was released. Let me deal with the “normal” weekly and monthly data in this post. First, industrial production continues to languish, down significantly from the end of last year, whether measured in total or just as to manufacturing: The saving grace here is that it has not declined as much as it did during the 2015-16 “shallow industrial...

Quick hits on a major Thursday economic news blitz There has been a ton of significant economic news this morning. I’m not going to be able to get to all or even most of it in depth. So I am going to leave a quick rundown here. Starting with the positive: -nominal retail sales up +0.6%, up +0.3% in real terms, up +0.2% Per Capita. This is another new high and suggests the US consumer continues to be in good shape (relatively speaking). Note that much of...