» recession

Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal posted the results of its May Survey of economists. Naturally I charted some of the data, focusing on GDP, but I held off on sharing it until we got the latest Federal Reserve GDP projections, published at 2 PM today. Here’s a link to the Journal’...

Australia is in grim shape. Retailers are going under, home prices are sinking, and there is an enormous collapse in the entire service sector. Collapse in Service Sector Markit reports Australia Services Sector Slumps in April  KEY FINDINGS The latest seasonally adjusted Australian Industry Gro...

Inquiring minds are listening to Marc Faber on the global economy. Link if video does not play: Marc Faber speaks of Imminent Market Crash Faber says China faces a recession defined as a slowdown to 3%. Interestingly, 3% is the same long-term target that Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets ...

The title for today’s article comes from a book written in 1929 by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran from WWI. The main theme from the book is given below fromWikipedia: One of the major themes of the novel is the difficulty of soldiers to revert to civilian life after having experienced extr...

Today’s employment numbers were decidedly soft, but the unemployment rate went down anyway, and that is about the best you can say. And this being a holiday weekend, it provides us an opportunity to look deep into the employment numbers, while we put off thinking about Spain for at least a wee...

The commentary below is a reprint of a new post on the ECRI website. This is a most welcome expansion on ECRI’s rationale for repeatedly affirming its bold recession call last September despite numerous signs in the intervening months of a seemingly improving economy. Many have questioned why...

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir?” – John Maynard Keynes If the market is doing something quite different than what you think it should be doing, it’s time to reevaluate your thesis.  Great calls are not just about getting the direction right but also the ti...

The Weekly Leading Index (WLI) growth indicator of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) posted -4.3 in its latest reading, data through February 3rd. The latest public data point is a reduced contraction from last week’s -5.3 (a slight downward revision from the previously reported -5....

Wall Street is promising riches to those who believe social media is something more than just another Darwinian churn of starving piranhas. Have you noticed that all the “hot” initial public offerings (IPOs) being hyped by Wall Street are all marketing companies? The big IPO that has ev...

It is now common to use the term bazooka when referring the actions of governments and central banks as they try to avert a credit crisis. And this week we saw a coordinated effort by central banks to use their bazookas to head off another 2008-style credit disaster. The market reacted as if the c...

The latest Food Stamp data (now called SNAP) is out. Here is a chart by reader Tim Wallace showing program usage. I added highlights in yellow to mark recessions based on NBER Business Cycle Expansions. The NBER is the official arbiter of recession start and end dates. Food Stamp Participation 196...

If French president Nicolas Sarkozy gets his wish to ‘Level the Playing Field‘ on sovereign bonds, a decade-long European recession is on its way. French President Nicolas Sarkozy made it clear in a speech in Toulon last week that he wanted the private sector to be given a more-level pl...