Month: October 2015

The Friday File: Halloween spending is expected to reach $6.9 billion this year including $2.3 billion on costumes, $2.2 billion on candy (which is experiencing annual inflation of 4.2%, 2.3 times the increase in the CPI) $2 billion on decorations,…

Late last week, the Chinese central bank lowered interest rates for the sixth time in 12 months and reduced the required reserve ratio for the fourth time in a year to prop up its slowing economy. With substantial overcapacity and…

Unsurprisingly, earlier today the Fed kept interest rates unchanged. In the press release following the meeting, the Fed found yet another way to say absolutely nothing about their future intentions, allowing the release to become a Rorschach test for market…

Absent any fanfare, finagling or fireworks, Congress finally raised the debt ceiling, reauthorized the Export-Import Bank and reached a budget deal that raises spending by $50 billion in FY16 and $30 billion in FY17. This is unambiguously good. It also…

Despite today’s weak new home sales data, YTD sales are at 392,000, up 18% compared to January-September 2014. Last September, 37,000 new homes were sold; 36,000 were sold last month. The peak, 99,000 in 9/05; the trough; 24,000 in 9/11.…

The Friday File: According to the CPI, the quality adjusted price for PCs and computer peripherals declined a stunning 96% between 12/97 and 8/15. Back then, an Intel Pentium 300 MHz processor was tops and desktop computers sold for over…

The US economy is slowing but not severely, moreover some of it’s due to a rise in inventories that’s hurting manufacturing and some is due to the rising dollar. That said, Q3 GDP will not exceed a feeble 1.5%. Additionally,…

To glimpse the pain developing nations are suffering due to the Chinese economic slowdown, look no further than Ghana. Their biggest exports, gold, oil and cocoa are all down. As a result, they are running a huge budget deficit of…

While today’s report shows residential construction improving, economically it’s largely irrelevant. In 2005, single-family construction was single-handedly 3.4% of GDP and all new residential spending was 6.7%. Now, single-family activity is 1.3% of GDP and all residential activity is 3.3%.…

Fear that the US might not raise the debt ceiling is making itself felt. Yields on Treasury bills maturing 11/5/15 and 11/12/15, the date falling immediately after the government runs out of money on 11/3/15, rose slightly, with other maturities…