The Financial Times – This is not the oil rally you’re looking for Goldman’s commodity analysts are out with their take on last week’s oil price rally, which saw Brent oil trade just shy of $70 per barrel. But they’re not sold on the idea that the rally has legs, describing it ultimately as self-defeating.… Continue reading Crude Oil’s Measurement Problem
<Click on chart for larger image> Real Time Economics (WSJ Blog) – Commerce to Offer New Ways to Measure the Economy How’s the economy doing? That depends on how you measure it. The Commerce Department this summer will add to its gross domestic product calculations with two new sets of figures on economic output. The… Continue reading When In Doubt, Make Up New Economic Measures
<Click on chart for larger image> <Click on chart for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – U.S. Industrial Production Falls for Fifth Straight Month U.S. industrial production fell for the fifth consecutive month in April, suggesting weak global demand, a stronger dollar and lower oil prices continue to limit output. Industrial production, which measures… Continue reading Industrial Production Falls Again
The Economist – Railing against bailing Congress launches new attacks on America’s central bank The Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010, was supposed to ensure that the Fed never again made such large, open-ended commitments. Congress told the Fed’s board to ensure that emergency lending propped up the financial system as a whole, not individual firms.… Continue reading Attacking The Fed
<Click on chart for larger image> The Financial Times – Dollar sinks to 3-month low on rate worries The dollar declined to its lowest level since January as investors continued to push back their expectations for when the US Federal Reserve will increase official borrowing costs. The move took it further away from the 12-year… Continue reading The Dollar Slumps
Crain’s – S&P downgrades Chicago debt—but not to junk Chicago’s battered credit rating has taken another hit—but it’s not as bad as it might have been. In a statement, Standard & Poor’s lowered the status of the city’s general obligation bonds two notches, to A- from A+. But although the agency appeared to reference the… Continue reading S&P Joins The Party & Downgrades Chicago Debt
The Financial Times – Reasons not to see start of ‘big one’ in Europe’s bond swings Treasury yields have been taking their cue from Bunds, but we are not yet on the brink One trigger might have been a pickup in inflation expectations on both sides of the Atlantic, encouraged by a rally in oil… Continue reading European Bonds
Project Syndicate – Barry Eichengreen: An Economics to Fit the Facts The economics profession was arguably the first casualty of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. After all, its practitioners failed to anticipate the calamity, and many appeared unable to say anything useful when the time came to formulate a response. But, as with the global… Continue reading Making Better Economic Models
The Wall Street Journal – A Liberal Speech Cop Targets Alan Greenspan The former Fed chairman drops out of a monetary conference after he’s assailed by Paul Krugman. Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, has pulled out of a conference this summer on monetary reform. He did so… Continue reading Krugman Disses Greenspan
None Today
<Click on chart for larger image> Comment Yesterday we noted that April’s retail sales numbers disappointed. This follows a string of disappointing results which, as the chart above shows, has led to the slowest year-over-year growth since the recovery began. Below is a story detailing what money is being spent on and what it is… Continue reading What Happened To The Spending Boom From Gas Savings?
<Click on chart for larger image> The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta – GDPNow The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2015 was 0.7 percent on May 13, down slightly from 0.8 percent on May 5. The nowcast for second-quarter real consumer spending growth ticked… Continue reading GDPNow