Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Taiwan says new Harpoon missiles will help it crush half of Chinese invasion fleet Taiwan says US$2.37 billion worth of Harpoon missiles would enable it to obliterate half of Chinese invasion armada “TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s military on Oct. 27 [2020] stated that the potential sale of US$2.37 billion worth of Harpoon anti-ship missiles will within five years help enable its defenders to wipe out “half of any” People’s Liberation Army...

Manufacturing and construction start out the month with positive prints As per usual, the new month starts with updates on manufacturing and construction. The ISM manufacturing index, and especially its new orders subindex, is an important short leading indicator for the production sector. This remained positive, but there has been a definite slowing in the past two months. In April the index declined from 57.1 to 55.4, and the new orders...

In Texas a large portion of Plant ’22 has already happened. Central Texas corn emergence is already knee high, green, and waiting for the rains to continue this week. Other parts of the country have struggled to get seed in the ground either due to low soil temps, too much precipitation or no rain to speak of. This past week or so as rains and storms, some wreaking tornado havoc, have doused the land in various agriculturally important regions....

Major Economic Confusion  Anybody confused by recent economic reports is not alone. The BEA has just reported a totally unexpected decline in real GDP for the first quarter of a 1.4% annual rate.  At the same time layoffs have reached a half century low and employment continues to rise.  How can we have an apparently beginning recession with the hottest job market in decades? Probably this has to do with the sources of the reported decline,...

RJS, MarketWatch 666 1st Quarter GDP Shrunk at a 1.4% Rate on a Record Trade Deficit and Slower Growth of Inventories Our economy shrunk at a 1.4% rate in the 1st quarter, the first GDP reversal since the first quarter of 2020, as increased personal consumption of services and greater fixed investment were more than offset by weaker investment in inventories and a record trade deficit, which subtracted over 3 percent from GDP . . ....

RJS, Focus on Fracking Summary: Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 20 year low, US oil supplies at a 14 year low; distillates supplies at a 14 year low, total oil + product inventories at an 13½ year low The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending April 22nd indicated that because of a drop in our oil exports and a big increase in oil that could not be...

Q1 GDP negative; but more importantly, two of three long leading indicators have deteriorated First things first: yes, it was a negative GDP print. No, it doesn’t necessarily mean recession. I’ve been expecting weakness to show up by now ever since last summer; so here it is.But the big culprits were non-core items. Personal consumption expenditures, even adjusted for inflation, were positive. The three big negatives were a big decline in...

You’re Fired! No, I quit!  So, Russia has stopped selling natural gas to Bulgaria and Poland because they refuse to pay for it in rubles, but they both say that they do not want Russian natural gas anyway! Barkley Rosser Tags: Russian natural gas

Prices soar, sales drop; oh by the way, sales lead prices New home sales declined -8.6% in March, which isn’t as sharp as it seems since declines of this magnitude happen 2-3x/year. The series is also heavily revised, so no new month’s number should be given too much weight. On the other hand, new home sales are frequently the first series to decline after a peak, so the fact that they have not made a new high since January of last year, and...

Lessons for the present from the Postwar Boom One of the things I harp on from time to time is that from 1932 to 1956 there was never a yield curve inversion, and yet recessions certainly did happen! Too many modern models get hung up on Fed intervention. But what happens when the Fed doesn’t intervene, as was the case for that 25 year period? Or is perhaps the case now, with the Fed funds rate at record levels below the inflation rate?...