Trade war escalation highlights downside economic risks
The big story today is the potential for a currency war, emanating from the escalating trade war between the US and China. But there's a considerable degree of data flow that I want to parse to give a more complete macro view.
Having…
Signs of recession are hitting Europe. Is the new Central Bank president up for the challenge?
By Marshall Auerback
This article was originally published on AlterNet and produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
We now know that there will be a changing of the guard at the European Central Bank…
A variety of pre-FOMC thoughts on the economy
My macro view
What's my overall thesis at this juncture?
It's that the global economy is slowing and is likely to slow further before it picks up. The US is the laggard in this slowing but is affected as well. From a markets perspective,…
Why what economists are now saying about inflation matters
The US Personal Income and Outlays report for June 2019 came out this morning. It showed personal income increasing 0.4% and wages and salaries increasing 0.5% last month. These are good numbers. And in conjunction with a lot of other data…
US GDP report puts nail in the coffin for the recession story
The latest US GDP report was just released showing the US economy expanded at a 2.1% annualized rate in the second quarter of 2019. This was marginally better than expectations for a 1.8% increase, and significantly above the Atlanta Fed's…
The awful news coming out of Germany
Yesterday, I highlighted Germany in terms of downside global economic risk. We are experiencing a manufacturing- and trade-led deceleration in global growth. Germany is the most prominent large Western economy leveraged to both.
Dreams of a Second Half Recovery
As I write this, Washington is fixated on the congressional testimony of Robert Mueller. My attention is elsewhere though. For me, it's the economy that matters.
Over the past two weeks, we have had a "recession watch" on Real Vision,…
Obama the Conservative vs Trump the Revolutionary
I was thinking about this topic this morning and I wanted to run it by you. The genesis of it all was an interview I did with Rohan Grey and Kevin Muir on Real Vision regarding MMT. And one conclusion I drew - partially motivated by the…
The Fed’s Pickle
This is a follow-up to my subscriber post from earlier today on the US economy. For those of you who are not paying subscribers, let me summarize the post by saying I think the US economy is slowing but not in a recession. Nevertheless, I…
The Downside Risk to the Mid-2019 Macroeconomy
None of the metrics I look at are screaming recession right now. In fact, for the US, some of the data is improving. Nevertheless, there is reason to be concerned about the state of the US economy in mid-2019 - so much so that my base case…