Economy

by John Lounsbury Rail traffic continues to show 2010 activity intermediate between 2008 and 2009 for carload traffic while intermodal traffic showed continued improvement to less than 10% below the pre-recession years of 2006 and…

Is Al Pacino a great actor or what?  Inspired by Paul Krugman's comments about China. I hope Dr. Krugman appreciates the humour. Source: Tony Montana, Scarface (1983) IMDB

by Claus Vistesen: Hull It is not that I don't enjoy a good old bull/Teflon run as much as the next guy but just to provide some form of balance to the current QEeasy Money Hymn I almost choked on my oatmeal earlier this week when I loaded…

US headline PPI came in somewhat higher than expected at 0.4%.  Weekly initial jobless claims were a bit stronger than expected and the US trade deficit was wider than expected.    The trade balance, adjusted for…

The following video is from the Wall Street Journal and serves as a continuation on the theme of investigating the economies of Europe's periphery. These videos are good because it puts a human face on a subject for people unfamiliar with…

We have heard this de-coupling theme for quite a few years now. The theory is that high-growth emerging markets are becoming less reliant on the U.S. and therefore are immune to exogenous shocks from the U.S. The video from Russia Today TV…

Note the reserve amounts in this post have been amended to reflect the $200 billion increase instead of the $20 billion originally cited. There are four developments in China to note today. First, China reported that its reserves jumped…

As I have been saying for over a year now, arguments that fiscal stimulus is needed are not going to work. George Soros makes these arguments in the video below. Not only are these arguments not going to succeed, they are counterproductive.…

by Edward Hugh Just to follow up on my recent long Estonia post, a couple of new data points have caught my attention recently: the sharp rise in Estonian inflation and the ongoing goods trade deficit. In the first place it is worth…

Is there a data series more highly anticipated and thoroughly parsed than the monthly nonfarm payroll release by the BLS? Probably not. But we’ll throw a few graphs onto the pile anyway. The headline Establishment Survey number came in at…