Archive for December 2016

Net income at all 6,021 credit unions in 2015 was $8.7 billion, up 0.3% from 2014 when there were 6,273 credit unions. For credit unions with assets greater than $500 million, return on assets (ROA) averaged 86 basis points or 0.86%. ROA was 0.56% for credit unions with $100 to $500 million in assets, 0.35%…

Despite correctly anticipating a quarter-point rise in the Fed Funds rate today, the stock market fell 0.8%, the dollar soared by almost 1% and the 10-yr treasury skyrocketed a tenth-of-a-point to 2.57%, its highest yield since 9/22/14. Why the big moves? The Fed anticipates three quarter-point rate hikes in 2017; the markets were expecting two.…

As the Fed begins to raise interest rates, it affects all nations but especially emerging markets. Rising rates, and thus improved US returns, vacuum up money from developing nations, causing their currencies to decline. This forces those nations to consider raising interest rates to reduce inflation and protect their weakening currencies. Nations currently most affected…

The Friday File: The highest mountain in the US is Denali at 20,320 feet. The next 22 tallest US mountains are also in Alaska. Outside Alaska, the tallest mountain is Mount Whitney in California at 14,494 feet. Of the 96 US mountains over 14,000 feet (fourteeners) all are in Alaska, California, Colorado, or Washington. The…

11/16 was the first month since 12/14 that all five Federal Reserve bank regional manufacturing surveys were positive. The five Fed regional banks that survey manufacturers are Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond. While all the indices have struggled, the Kansas City index and especially the Dallas index have fared particularly poorly due…

Seventy-five years ago today, a Japanese strike force of 353 planes staged a surprise 110 minute attack in two waves on Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403 Americans. Of the eight battleships in Pearl Harbor that day, four were sunk, one was capsized, one run aground, and two were badly damaged, crippling the US Pacific fleet. 11…

Trump’s decision to essentially force Carrier to preserve 800 manufacturing jobs in Indianapolis is bad policy. If Trump thinks stunts like this will reverse the macroeconomic tide, he’s woefully uninformed. Moreover, other firms may threaten to outsource jobs to get financial incentives like Carrier. Lastly, to globally compete but with higher costs, the plant in…

Subtracting November’s excellent unemployment rate of 4.6%, (tops since 8/07) from the November U6 rate of 9.3%, the most expansive measure of unemployment and underemployment (and the best since 4/08), is a quick way to measure labor force slack. That number is 4.7%. At the housing boom peak in 4/06 it was 3.4%. At 4.7%,…

The Friday File: For the five years ending 7/31/16, the most popular opera composer was Giuseppe Verdi, with 14% of global performances. W.A. Mozart was next at 10%, then Puccini at 9%, and Rossini, Wagner and Donizetti all at about 4%. Verdi’s La Traviata was, by far, the most popular opera with 4,000 performances, followed…