Economy

by Edward Hugh Spain’s statistics office continue to issue worryingly confusing press releases. The latest example is one published in connection with the quarterly labour force survey which came out last Friday. Now the data the INE…

The Institute for Supply Management (formerly the National Association of Purchasing Management) releases the widely-followed Report On Business® each month.  This is considered the most important data set in the manufacturing sector.…

Early in the year, I posted a few times on a coming wave of mortgage defaults generally and the economic effect of living in defaulted accommodation specifically. My conclusion at the time was that, while the consumer spending due to the…

The banking has not reached the halfway point, maybe not even the midpoint of the first quarter. The FDIC has recorded 307 bank failures. The total could reach 1,800 - 3,000.

by Edward Hugh Spain’s troubled banking sector is back in the news again. Despite the apparently successful stress tests carried out over the summer problems persist, and don’t seem likely to go away soon. Foremost among these is the…

There seem to be some weak and also some fairly good correlations between foreclosures and unemployment. However, there are likely be housing bubble factors as well.

by Annaly Capital Management Thursday’s third quarter GDP release provides a ton of fodder for the data dorks among us. There will be more to follow on this in the October monthly commentary, but today we’ll look at just one of the…

The first reading of 3rd quarter GDP was released this morning, with the headline coming in right on top of estimates at 2%. The happy surprise of the report was personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which were better than expectations…

Here's a good town hall-style video featuring Simon Schama and Hugh Hendry on BBC QuestionTime. The ever-combative Hendry gave his opinion on the prospects for the UK economy going forward from the Austerian viewpoint. He said that he…

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has issued the following news release today: Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an…