consumers

The US consumer can't catch a break. As if rising food prices weren't enough - with corn prices at record highs and other food prices expected to move higher next year - we now also have a sharp increase in gasoline prices.

Why is the global economy hamstrung by heavy debts and weak banks? Or put another way, why doesn’t deleveraging happen, and the weight of debt reduce, and why doesn’t the economy expand so the weak banks can once more become robust and…

Here's another Tech Ticker segment on the state of the economy. Noted economic bear Gary Shilling believes the US is in recession or will be entering one shortly. His view is that wages have not grown robustly enough to warrant the level of…

"Real final sales" and factory production continued to be supported by inventory building . Governments continued to shrink their spending, and they sucked -0.60% from the headline number. This report shows per capita disposable income is…

The Economist: "Over the past 30 years, China’s total fertility rate—the number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime—has fallen from 2.6, well above the rate needed to hold a population steady, to 1.56, well below that…

Gary Shilling recently wrote a five-part series for Bloomberg News on the economy. His view is that GDP growth comes primarily from consumers spending from either higher income or from reduced savings and debt accumulation. In his view, the…

This week's weekly commentary on markets and the economy features Spain. In my view, the potential for downside economic and portfolio risk has increased markedly as we realise that Spain is at risk and there is no plan B in the euro zone.…

To try to work out what China's future economic options might be I will begin with two key assumptions. The first is that the fundamental imbalance in China is the very low GDP share of consumption. This low GDP share of consumption, I have…

Sweden reported stronger business and manufacturing confidence numbers earlier this week, but the Feb retail sales report was a more significant catalyst. There are four new developments from Norway today. Individually and collectively,…