Economic Data

The latest batch of data points coming out of the global economy are a mixed bag. Some point to continued robust retail sales in the U.S. but other points show weakness in expected capital expenditure and hiring globally, while others show…

Today, I want to highlight some of the best stories in the news today. US economy Let’s start off with the US, where the hiring of holiday workers is said to track very well with retail sales. In the lead up to the holidays, the…

Despite my upbeat view on the U.S., there are considerable headwinds to the global economy. We see this in the nexus of slowdowns in China and Europe and the decline in commodities, gold and oil which intersect with energy high yield bonds…

Japan seems to be heading deeper and deeper into a very risky experiment based on a misunderstanding about what the problem facing the country actually is.

I stole this title from the Wall Street Journal because that was takeaway #1 in their post on the 5 takeaways on eurozone GDP. It seems apt but what does it mean? For me it means that the eurozone is at stall speed, vulnerable to crashing…

The big news this morning is the US employment report. The headline numbers were all good, though the add to non-farm payrolls came in below expectations. While this was a good report, the wage-related data were disappointing. Some thoughts…

The Absolute Return Letter, November 2014 “The single most robust and striking fact about cross-national growth is regression to the mean.” -Lawrence Summers and Lant Pritchett Low growth is printed on the wall When financial markets…

The US mid-term elections have just ended as a major victory for the Republican Party. And while I don’t do politics, being in DC affords me a front row seat to what’s going on. Below is my take on what happened, why and what it means for…

This is going to be a relatively short note focused on what is going on in Japan because of the news that Japan has ramped up its program of quantitative easing to new heights. Coming on the heels of the US Federal Reserve’s announcement…

The GDP and jobless claims numbers for the U.S. came out today and they confirm the continued solid pace of recovery that has taken shape since Q2 began. GDP growth came in at a 3.5% annualized and initial jobless claims were 287,000,…