Economic Data

Unfortunately for President Obama, the economy is not doing well. And the cuts envisaged in this deal make that problem worse. From an electoral standpoint this is already becoming a problem in key swing states like Pennsylvania.

What does it mean that disposable income was revised down all three years, yet the savings rate was revised down in 2009 and 2010? I think it means that people were under debt stress trying to maintain lifestyles once the technical recovery…

While the potential still exists for manufacturing to tick back up, the jobs picture and the fiscal and monetary backdrop are not supportive of this outcome. The inflation backdrop is the best part about this picture, with that subindex…

I have been arguing for a while that as long as the Chinese government retains its capacity to raise debt we are not going to see a sharp slowdown in economic growth – at least until 2013. Any indication that the economy is slowing too…

After the US GDP revisions we saw on Friday, it is clear that the US economy is at stall speed. But globally, we are seeing a slowdown in Europe and emerging markets too, especially China. And the fact is monetary and fiscal policy are…

The signal we’re extracting from the weekly move of the Four Horsemen is that though concern and the lack of confidence in the U.S. over the debt ceiling issue has increased, other factors, such as the deflationary consequences of a large…

Included in the BEA's first ("Advance") estimate of second quarter 2011 GDP were significant downward revisions to previously published data, some of it dating back to 2003. Astonishingly, the BEA even substantially cut their annualized GDP…

The latest batch of GDP numbers saw some heavy downward revisions to prior numbers, especially during the recession of 2008-2009. In fact, the GDP revisions were so extensive, they put us back in the 'technical recovery' phase i.e. where we…

The Chinese 2-5 year swap spread has flattening to 1 basis point. The last time it was so flat was 2008.

While the headline number was well below expectations of 1.8%, what must be noted are the major revisions. Q1 2011 is now reported as +0.4%. That’s a major downward revision which demonstrates that QE2 was in fact doing nothing for growth…