There is some speculation that the US economy is starting to have a déjà vu moment. The pace of growth in 2011 looked pretty good and then global events affected that progress and growth soon turned to slump. This year also started with some economic enthusiasm and now there are all manner of warning bells [...]
Corporate earnings also give us an opportunity to peer into the street-level segments of the marketplace – and the American Express earnings report from yesterday provided an interesting snapshot. In addition to the Experian report above showing defaults were dropping, American Express showed an 8.7% increase in credit card use for March. This is important [...]
Consumer loans experienced a drop in default rates for what appears to be a third consecutive month (since the beginning of the year). Part of this could be the fact that most defaults have happened and the rate would naturally go down. Or, it could be a legitimate drop in the rate because economic conditions [...]
Part of the risk of earnings season is that the notion of a few can dictate the sentiment of many. Several CEOs of issued downward sentiment with their Q1 earnings reports saying that they will revise their guidance downward a bit for the rest of 2012. Concerns over European debt, the US election, extension of [...]
Over the past three or four years there has been but one consistently bright spot in the US economy and it is one that still takes people by surprise. This is a nation that most assume no longer has a manufacturing base after all. The myth has been persistent as pundit after pundit has [...]
The recovery of the economy as a whole will depend on a lot of things – not the least of which is the housing market. Much has been written in the last few years outlining just why this sector is so important to the economy as a whole but it bears repeating as we [...]
Many analysts and observers have noted that the economic news from last year looked a lot like this year before it all went south. There was enthusiasm about the improvement in jobs, retail numbers and overall economic growth before the double crush of the earthquake/tsunami in Japan and the oil shock that accompanied the ferment [...]
The threat of inflation is never very far away but for now there is not much to suggest that a surge is imminent. Earlier in the year there was some real expectation that commodity prices would force a jump in inflation but the price of gasoline seems to have peaked for the moment and has [...]
As true with consumers as it is with playground behavior. The consumer surveys for the past few months have been pretty weak and would lead one to conclude that the average shopper is about to return to their spending coma. If one acknowledges the fact that consumers lie through their teeth on these surveys it [...]
This is definitely an eye of the beholder situation. If one was to limit that question to just those people at the Federal Reserve with the ability to do something about inflation one would get a very diverse set of opinions and in fact these are the opinions that have been offered up in [...]
