Archive for May 2016

In 2015, the US was, for the 4th year running, the top global producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons. In 2015, the US produced 15 million bbl/day of oil equivalent petroleum, including 9.4 million bbl/day of crude oil, and 14 million bbl/day of oil equivalent natural gas. Russia was second, producing about 11 million…

The Friday File: The cemetery with the largest number of American military dead in Europe is the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial, with 14,246 total burials. Most lost their lives during WWI. The largest cemetery in the Pacific is the Manila American Cemetery with 17,206 graves; most buried there died in WWII. There are 22…

With April durable goods sales surprisingly strong, retail sales edging up, trade data looking slightly better, housing strengthening, and industrial production increasing — despite continued weakness in agriculture, energy and export-oriented manufacturing — Q2 GDP should be 3%, up sharply from Q1’s 0.5%, which will be revised up. That said, January-June GDP growth will still…

Despite the cost, China continues propping up its overvalued currency. It does this by selling dollars and buying yuan. In this process, the Chinese money supply shrinks, making growth more difficult, China burns through its foreign reserves, which have already shrunk from $4 trillion to $3.22 trillion in 22 just months and exports suffer. Letting…

Doubling the pay threshold under which salaried workers must be eligible for overtime to $47,476 a year will make an additional 4.2 million employees, less than 3% of all workers, eligible for overtime pay. By comparison, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour nationally would affect about a third of the workforce. That’s not…

During 2/16, cash home sales were 35.7% of all transactions, their lowest February reading since 2008 and a 2.5 percentage points decline Y-o-Y. Cash sales were 59.2% of REO sales, 35.6% of resales, 32.6% of short sales and 15.2% of new home sales. Traditionally, cash transactions were 25% of sales and should be back there…

The Friday File: This past Wednesday, 100 pizza chefs built a 1.15 mile long pizza in Naples, Italy, breaking the previous mile- long record set in Milan last year. The recipe called for 4,409 lbs of mozzarella and flour, 3,527 lbs of tomatoes, 66 lbs of basil and 53 gallons of oil. The world famous…

While inflation here appears to be rising, albeit slowly, in the Eurozone prices are falling. Despite rising global energy prices, April Eurozone inflation was -0.2% Y-o-Y with the YTD inflation also negative. Worse, the culprit was a decline in the price of services from 1.4% in March to 0.9% in April. Moreover, the core inflation…