Economic Data

What follows is simply a follow-up note to my earlier (Elephant in The Euro Room) piece on Italy. The decision by S&P to put Italian sovereign debt on negative outlook, and the subsequent announcement by Moody’s that it was considering…

My hope is that, despite slowing in Europe and China, the global economy will have enough pop to get the US through its experiment with expansionary fiscal contraction. But this is just a hope.

The uptick in US data is a nice relief given the fact that Europe’s manufacturing sector slowed to an 18-moth low. Overall, the US manufacturing sector is growing, but at a slower pace than last year. The data do not point to a pronounced…

The mitigating factors are the recent manufacturing data and the pickup in small business credit. I especially like to see small business with access to and take up of credit because that could mean renewed hiring. The jobless claims…

Last week I showed you one way to look at the jobs crisis in graphical form. Here’s another from Calculated Risk.

Japan is set to release a slew of economic data on July 1. Of these the jobless rate is probably the least important. It is lagging indicator, though softness in the job-to-applicant ratio would warn of no quick improvement. On the other…

Short of a fiscal union, there are other measures which the Greeks could adopt to make their bonds more attractive to external investors, thereby preventing the markets shutting the country down and refusing to extend further credit to a…

Since the recession in 1990-91, the recovery of employment in the US has had a U-shape that is nothing like the previous post-World War II employment recoveries. This one will be the worst.

The latest Case-Shiller Home Price Index update has come out. The data show an uptick in home prices on an unadjusted basis from March to April.

The economy is complex in the extreme. And what economists tend to do is model it by making a few simplifying and clarifying assumptions. Here’s the problem.