Economic Data

The extended period of low growth following the Global Crisis was denoted the ‘New Normal’ by some. This column argues that the period is still ongoing, and would be more usefully described as the ‘New Abnormal’. Far from being an…

The latest jobs report came in at 160,000 jobs added to US non-farm payrolls. As this number was below expectations, it effectively sidelines the Fed in June. And given we are in an election year, the chances of two rate hikes occurring are…

The minutes from the Federal Reserve Board's last meeting have come out and they are dovish. While on the one hand, we should praise the Fed for showing it is data-dependent as it has professed to be, on the other hand the abrupt change in…

The US economy - while still far from recession - is still downshifting. At the same time, the Federal Reserve - while less hawkish than in December - is still in tightening mode. This combination still makes recession a reasonable worst…

Recent data releases related to the Eurozone have been disappointing. This column argues that momentum from the long-delayed 2014-15 recovery is faltering because the Eurozone economy is affected, with a lag, by the US slowdown. The…

The US economy is not in a recession right now and the latest numbers on US GDP confirm this view. And while the headline growth number was weak, the consumer spending and personal income numbers are supportive of 2%ish growth into 2016.…

About a month ago, I wrote a post on how market contagion would happen due to deteriorating credit conditions in energy high yield. And while this doesn’t necessarily lead to recession or financial crisis, it has already meant a real…

The recent data coming out of the US has been almost unrelentingly negative outside of the recent jobs reports. The Atlanta Fed GDP now report was already down to 0.7% for Q4 when poor output and retail sales data came out. I expect the…

I hate backtracking, but I need to make a correction to the analysis I just sent out. An alert reader, who also tracks the jobs data I am using, wrote me, noting that my data series seemed to chop off the last several months of 2015, making…

Editor's note: The data in the first time series depicted here is cut off in 2015, changing the tenor of the analysis. Please see the correction following this piece, that has a more negative cast regarding the US. The U.S. economy may be…