Jobs Half-Grow

By Econ70 | 03/07/2011

192K jobs in Feb! But wait. Due to storms in Jan let’s avg out job growth in Jan and Feb. That gets us about 125K per month; not much better than in Q4 ’10. So we have positive job growth but no acceleration! This suggests GDP growth of 3% maybe 3.5%; half of what’s needed!…

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Sellin’ Outside the USA

By Econ70 | 02/08/2011

S&P 500 sales did quite well in Q4 — up 7.7% and ahead of estimates by a country mile. But, from what I see most growth in sales is coming from outside the USA! Here, revenues are growing at barely a 3% annual rate. The pace is around 20% for foreign-derived sources. The question is…

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MORE ON Q4 GDP

By Econ70 | 02/02/2011

Q3 saw a boost to GDP due to inventories so the Q4 reversal must be seen in that light. Monday’s personal income & spending report gave details on how ’10 ended. Real personal consumer expenditure (PCE) spending rose 0.4% MoM in Dec but real personal disposable income was up only up 0.1%. How? Because consumers…

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CONSUMPTION DRIVEN GDP

By Econ70 | 01/31/2011

While 3.2% GDP growth in Q4 is excellent it was driven entirely by consumption which makes up 70% of GDP. The other 30% of the economy fared poorly in Q4 essentially stagnating (a puny 0.2% annualized growth rate). So while the consumer enjoyed its fastest growth rate since Q1 ‘06, the rest of the economy…

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