United States

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…

Last week I was talking about the Goldilocks scenario for the US. I think it is achievable. But this week, RBS tells us that the bears have killed Goldilocks. They say we should "sell everything". Of course, I am more bullish than RBS - or…

The jobs report today was a strong one, underscoring the ability of the US economy to power through. Am I uneasy about where we are in the economic and credit cycle and the accuracy of the Fed’s forward guidance? Yes - and I tend to think…

I am uneasy about where we are in the economic and credit cycle and the accuracy of the Fed’s forward guidance. I think we are above stall speed now. But I also think global policy divergence, slowing earnings growth and poor capex numbers…

I don’t believe the jobs report today is indicative of an improving US economy. I believe it is a one-off that is so strong that it will be difficult for the Fed to overlook it. And this makes the likelihood of rate hikes that much greater,…

According to Jon Hilsenrath at the Wall Street Journal, ECB and PBOC easing aren’t obstacles to a Fed rate hike before year-end. Yet, the Wall Street Journal is running a headline as its top story showing that "U.S. Companies Warn of…

Ever since Willem Buiter’s call for a global recession within the next two years, people have been parsing the data for some indication that the US has been fatally compromised by contagion from emerging markets. Nothing in Buiter’s piece…

The equity markets that have fallen the least so far are the U.S. and the Japanese markets. If my prediction that we are looking into a more difficult period in the U.S. (and the euro zone), U.S. equities look particularly vulnerable, so…