It isn’t so much that Americans are any more or less in debt than they were before but the nature of that debt is changing and this has implications going forward. For decades the pattern was roughly the same – Americans used their access to credit to sustain lifestyles that they could not quite afford. [...]
One of the metrics that typically will spike just before aggressive economic recovery is the merger and acquisition sector. Many analysts will use M&A as a barometer for robust recovery. But this period of time could be different. As Chris wrote about on Tuesday, there are significant volumes of foreign investment now flowing into [...]
It is amazing how often an article of faith is accepted as true. Since the beginning of the downturn it has been suggested that giving people extended unemployment benefits would keep them from taking a job – that they would rather not work and get the check than take a job that wasn’t to their [...]
O.K that was an odd headline. The bottom line is that we had actually expected sales to be a bit weaker than what US automakers reported for April – and yet many others were disappointed. Looking at US auto sales for April, they were up 8.5% versus expectations of about 11%. According to the accurate [...]
This will be the worst pictogram in the history of pictograms. But, we are going to allow statistics to tell our story. There are a series of 5 charts following that show you how certain outlets will use data and statistics to tell whatever story they want to tell. A good friend of ours put [...]
We won’t even begin to justify the headlines by showing you what they say. You won’t be able to hit a newspaper or website without seeing the positive strokes being given to the economy. The president is touting the numbers, the Republicans are using it to show that they were right about the sequester and [...]
There is more and more to get excited about in the housing sector as the price of homes keep rising – 9.3% over what they were in February of last year. The prime reason for this surge is good old-fashioned supply and demand as there are far more people interested in making the leap into [...]
The meeting of the European Central Bank is taking place this week and the majority of analysts are in unusual agreement. They all concur that Draghi and the ECB governors as a whole have no real options left. It is pretty easy to see why the head of the German Bundesbank – Axel Weber – [...]
We chose that headline carefully, because the mainstream is throwing a lot of different notions at you. “Biggest gain in new home sales since 2008”, “housing booming”, “housing rebound robust”, etc. You get the idea. Yes, new home sales rose 1.5% to reach an annualized rate of about 417,000. And yes, we have to [...]
The latest report from the Philly Federal Reserve on manufacturing and business activity in its region showed that it declined in April, hitting a reading of 1.3 which was down from 2.0 in March. Analysts had expected the index to actually rise to a reading of 3.3 – so this was a highly disappointing development. [...]
