double dip

Unemployment claims dropped dramatically to 466,000 this past week. This is the best data on the unemployment front we have seen in a long time. The prior week’s claims were also downwardly revised for the first time in a while. These…

Barack Obama has now come clean about his thinking on why his administration has decided to focus first on reducing the deficit and next on jobs. He fears a double-dip recession will occur if foreigners lose confidence in the U.S. dollar,…

Nouriel Roubini, writing in the New York Daily News , said on Sunday that “unemployed Americans should hunker down for more job losses” given the likelihood of a job less recovery. This was as gloomy a piece as I have seen from Roubini in…

Today, I want to run a few thoughts by you courtesy of John Mauldin.  In his recent weekly newsletter, he makes a number of points I have made here over the past few weeks and comes to a similar conclusion about the weakness of…

From Bloomberg: Confidence among U.S. consumers unexpectedly dropped in November as the loss of jobs threatened to undermine the biggest part of the economy. The Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary sentiment index decreased…

The motivating factor?  this article in Politico: President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year's State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay…

You have probably heard the term money illusion.  I want to coin a related new term called unemployment rate illusion because I think it is significant in light of some of the things David Rosenberg said earlier today about the…

David Rosenberg thinks the unemployment rate is headed much higher than anyone anticipates.  If you recall, back in January when the stimulus package was crafted, the Obama Administration felt that passing the bill would mean an…

Former Morgan Stanley economist Andy Xie joins other famed prognosticators like Nouriel Roubini in worrying about an incipient asset bubble. The Rosetta Stone Advisors board member sees the huge increase in money supply created by central…

Earlier today we learned that the Singapore PMI was much weaker than expected for September 2009, coming in at 50.6 versus 54.4 for August. While this demonstrates that the manufacturing sector there is still rising, it is doing so just…