The forecast for grains (specifically wheat) was released yesterday and it was significantly optimistic over production levels seen for the last two years. A synopsis of the USDA report follows: “Winter wheat production is forecast at 1.69 billion bushels, up 13 percent from 2011. The area expected to be harvested for grain or seed [...]
Friday is a great day to get some industry-basing data out there so that we understand how to “keep score”. The Energy Information Agency put out its weekly inventory report – and here is a basic summary of that report: Oil inventories rose 3.7 million barrels (higher than the 2 million barrel build analysts [...]
We don’t have any stake in JP Morgan/Chase. We also don’t have a relationship with Jamie Dimon, its CEO. But there are some great lessons to learn from the debacle this quarter at JP Morgan and how to handle a controversy from a leadership perspective. First, the situation: JP Morgan announced that it lost [...]
A term is being bantered about called the “Fiscal Cliff”. Officials from the Fed today incited significant consternation in the market by saying the “Fiscal Cliff” as being worse than the European financial woes and even the housing impact as a bigger impact on the US economy. The Fed in general is trying to paint [...]
The foundation of the US economic dream is that people can rise to the income ranks they aspire to through a combination of hard work and luck. For some that is truer than for others. The states that seem to have the most upward mobility are those in the Northeast and the states with the [...]
The price at the pump is less than it was and by the coverage in the press one would think we were back to the days of 30 cent a gallon gas. The fact is that the national average is now around $3.80 instead of $3.95 and that is a good thing but one should [...]
Both West Texas Intermediate and Brent North Sea Crude has just plummeted in the day – driven largely by the weak labor report this morning and worries over a European recession. Brent North Sea Crude was down more than $3.21 in trading today, falling to $112.94 (late trading). This is the lowest it has been [...]
The public sector added about 115k jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 8.1%. That’s it. Hours of additional research and debate over the employment report won’t change what was a ho-hum jobs report. The unemployment rate inched downward because more
The consumer should be feeling less than robust at this stage of the year – at least as far as one would be able to use past behavior as a guide. The two things that seem to have the most impact on consumer mood in general have been the status of the job market and [...]
Automakers were showing mixed results against volumes in 2011. Because of the volatility in the marketplace and some of the mixed signals being sent by the various components of a global market, we have to take the results for April at face value. When looking at the automakers, we have to consider a couple [...]
