Economic Data

I just got this via email from the US Labor Department: In the week ending February 2, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 234,000, a decrease of 19,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 253,000. The…

In the US stock market, technology stocks are leading the rally from the deeply oversold levels in December. And that has a lot of people thinking the worst is over. But this is just a relief rally. The real economy is actually…

Note: this post is going out via Patreon and Credit Writedowns. So, you may get duplicate emails. I am just doing this to alert anyone that is only getting emails on one platform to ping me at [email protected], so I can fix that.…

My last daily post was about the emerging consensus view that a global recession is just around the corner. And the sense I get is that people believe this recession - unlike the one during the Great Financial Crisis - is being stoked by a…

Analysts are increasingly skeptical that China’s very high reported GDP growth rate provides a meaningful picture of the economy’s health. There are, however, at least three very different ways that reported GDP can fail to reflect the…

Two issues I mentioned yesterday need some clarification. Trump will declare a state of emergency for the Wall The first is the shutdown. It's this quote that needs clarification: The longer the shutdown goes on, the more damage it will do.…

Today's daily post is going to a true daily, covering a wide range of market and political economy news. Forcing government to rule out no deal And I want to start with Brexit because I think this is one of the most pressing issues in the…

I want to go back to my theme of just over a week ago about the resiliency of the US economy. That's because, regardless of one-day -- or even multi-day -- stock market gyrations, the real economy is the defining issue for markets.…

The midterm election is over. So we can go back to worrying about the Fed! I ended yesterday's political economy piece saying: My sense, here, is that a divided Congress means we are in a ride it out period economically. There are no more…

This morning, I gave you an initial reaction to the jobs number, saying: A bad number won’t change the Fed’s forward guidance because the Fed has a tightening bias. But that bias means that a good number could tip us toward four rate hikes…