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In This Issue: How do You Spell Stagflation? Cooking the Inflation Books Gaming the Producer Price Index Consumer Spending is Up, but then Again, It May Be Down A Two Dimensional Problem Saudi Justice New York, Toronto, Europe and Thanksgiving This week we look at inflation. Is it just over 2%, giving...
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The Return of Muddle Through The dollar reaches new lows. The housing market shows no sign of a bottom. Oil almost touches $84 before backing off. Interest rates go up after the Fed cuts. So naturally the stock market keeps climbing. But then, consumer spending came in strong, employment looks like it...
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Sea Change at the Fed "Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea change Into something rich and strange" (The Tempest - Shakespeare) The term "sea change" has come to mean a profound transformation ever since...
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The Mortgage Pig in the Python Inflation is Baked into the CPI Numbers The Mortgage Pig in the Python Housing Starts Look to Stop A Few Thoughts on the Recent Credit Crisis Half of All Hedge Funds Gone? Golf, Weddings, and Europe With the economy increasingly looking like it will slow down materially...
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The Birth/Death Ratio Is the economy slowing down or is it getting ready to go on a new tear? Judging by the run-up in the Dow, the answer is a major turnaround for the economy in the last half of the year, from the close-to-recession numbers of the first quarter. So, what has happened to my forecast...
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Introduction Be careful for what you wish, because you may get it, and sometimes as H. L. Mencken wrote, you get it good and hard. The collective brain deficit trust, otherwise known as the US Congress, wish for the Chinese to revalue their currency upwards. Today we look at why they may indeed get their...
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Introduction Summer driving season is almost upon us. I remember more than a few long road trips with young kids, who would eventually get bored and tired and lulled into sleep, and with a stop for gas would wake up and ask, "Are we there yet?" or "Where are we?" They would be impatient...
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Introduction Today's Outside the Box is a very interesting piece written by Louis-Vincent Gave and the team at GaveKal entitled "Part 2: So What Should We Worry About?" His article is a follow up to an earlier one that he wrote on why he, and the rest of the GaveKal team, had been bullish...
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Introduction What are the odds of a recession? According to a recent Fed study, they may be 51.9%. Close enough to 50-50 for government work. We analyze this study, look at a few graphs which show a major disconnect between the housing market and the US manufacturing and services sectors, and then close...
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Introduction Are we overbought and overvalued? Maybe. Is inflation coming under control? Maybe not. Did housing construction rebound last month? No. The only rebound was in the statistics. (I know readers will be shocked to learn that some statistics just may not actually be what the headline says.)...