Economic Data

DateTime (ET)StatisticForActualBriefing ForecastMarket ExpectsPriorRevised FromJun 2410:00 AMConsumer ConfidenceJun-57.057.057.2-Jun 258:30 AMDurable OrdersMay-0.3%0.0%-0.5%-Jun 2510:00 AMNew Home SalesMay-520K510K526K-Jun 2510:30 AMCrude…

I was inputting some statistics into an excel spreadsheet for unemployment claims when it occurred to me: the Bush administration is cooking the books. Not literally, but figuratively. Here's my logic.Let's leave aside whether the…

Industrial production and capacity utilization numbers were released by the Fed this morning. These numbers are important because production is one of five factors the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) looks at to judge…

Argentina too has a government statistics problem. Their new inflation index is seen as unbelievable.(see FT article here.)

The U.S. Department of Labor just released the weekly report for unemployment insurance claims. Initial claims were 384,000, while continuing claims rose to 3.139 million. The 4-week average moved up to 3,099,250. This is 593,000 more…

The U.S. economy is losing jobs fast. I will have more to say about this later, but I wanted to get out a link to Bloomberg's coverage of the 8:30 unemployment report. There's also a link to the report under the "Economic Data" section in…

Every week the U.S. Department of Labor puts out the previous week's jobless claims statistics through its Employment and Training Administration (Doleta). Analysts look at it to get a sense of how employment is being affected by the…

Economists have a way of coming up with more ratios and statistics than you can shake a stick at. True to my profession, I have developed a long-term yardstick of market overvaluation and undervaluation. I have no short-hand for it yet so…

I don't trust the U.S. government's inflation number for measuring real GDP. The annual rate of inflation in this measurement is only 2.2%, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is running at a 4.0% clip. That's as large a differential as…

The GDP number was revised upwards from 0.6% growth to 0.9% growth. However, what is most interesting is the GDP implicit price deflator. This is the index number the BEA uses to get from nominal GDP to real GDP, the inflation-adjusted…