recovery

Europe is in recession right now, but the US is in a weak but fairly long-lived economic recovery. The difference in economic fortunes owes entirely to differing policy responses in both regions. In Europe, the economic paradigm has…

Today I thought I would try a little experiment by beginning to write a daily commentary. I have been thinking about doing this for a while and decided I needed to give it a go here because I don't have an in-depth article I am working on.…

US GDP contracted at a 0.1% annualised rate in Q4 of 2012 according to preliminary estimates announced by the US government earlier today. This contraction was well below consensus estimates and comes as a shock to most of the analyst…

Economic data in the US is not trending down. It is stabilizing and perhaps trending marginally higher. We have seen a slew of data showing that the US data are outperforming expectations. The data for the housing market in the United…

Here's a brief, late Friday post to follow up on the jobs number. If you look at recoveries from past recessions in the United States, what you usually see is a fall in the year-over-year unemployment rate as the economy gathers steam. And…

By Sober Look The Citi Economic Surprise index was fairly accurate in pointing to a US slowdown in the first half of 2012. One therefore should not dismiss the recent reversal in the indicator's trend. The index just went into the positive…

This daily commentary is a bronze-level post. A lot of the data coming through in recent weeks shows the US recovery will continue for a bit. I caught two or three data points in the links today about this so I wanted to flag it for the…

Late yesterday the US reported the biggest jump in consumer credit in a decade. It reinforces the signal of the gradual healing of the labor market and the resilience of the US consumer. The report increases the risk that the November…

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…

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…