Economic Data

After finding that UK and European manufacturing are in the doldrums, today we hear that UK services are also contracting. This surely must mean that the UK is in or will soon be in recession.From Bloomberg News:U.K. services from airlines…

With a slew of layoffs ranging from airlines to banking, expect both claims data and the unemployment rate to spike up substantially. This week may be the first such week as jobless claims came in at 404,000, the 2nd time over 400,000 this…

The data was better than expected. I will look to see what a drill down says about the data. My initial take is that the data look fairly benign: construction fell by 43,000, manufacturing employment fell by 33,000. Within…

The well-deserved euphoria over the European Championship in football has brought welcome relief to Spanish consumers, weighed down by a slow economy. However, global economies have not decoupled from the U.S. slowdown. European economies…

The chart below is yet another from Perot Charts. I have no particular message in mind with this chart except to inform my readers how the government gets and uses tax monies. One issue to note is the outsize proportion of taxes that…

Perot Charts is Ross Perot's attempt to reintroduce himself into politics in the US. From his standpoint, the U.S. is running an irresponsible fiscal policy that will only lead to ruin. His chart on the U.S. national debt, now over $9…

The news that income and spending in the U.S. economy has been resilient must be cheered as good (see news release here). It may result in our seeing a W-shaped recession as opposed to a U- or L-shaped one. The U.S. consumer is much more…

At 8:30 EDT this morning, the Labor department released its jobless claims numbers. The numbers are not appreciably different than a week ago. But they are largely consistent with recession: 384,000 jobless claims and 3,139,000 continuing…

Today's economic data releases were for durable goods and new home salesDurable GoodsStrong export growth has been keeping U.S. factories busier than they would normally be during a period of falling domestic demand. Orders had fallen for…

Ross Perot is making a comeback! The Texas billionaire has come back into the political fray with his website Perot Charts. I recommend taking a stroll through it. You will definitely be a wiser person for it. Today's chart comes from…