The end of rising wages = the end of mass affluence: we just enjoyed the Last Christmas in America (TLCIA). As unemployment topped 10%, the January 1975 cover of Ramparts magazine blared: The End of Affluence: The Last Christmas in America. (TLCIA) The government responded to the high unemployment, rampant inflation and rising budget deficits by manipulating data to…
Econintersect: Week 51 of 2014 shows same week total rail traffic (from same week one year ago) improved according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR) traffic data. The rate of growth continues to be strong in all of the rolling averages reported below. This analysis is looking for clues in the rail data to show the…
In January, Democratic Senator Harry Reid will retire from being the Majority Leader – with Republican Mitch McConnell as his replacement. McConnell is a consummate Washington insider. After graduating from the University of Louisville in 1964, he traveled to Washington, D.C. to become an intern for Senator John Sherman Cooper. Later, he worked for both…
by Rick Wright Hello traders! In this week’s Lessons from the Pros Newsletter I’d like to go into a brief explanation of trading with the trend, and a common pattern to help you trade against the trend. First of all, by now you have all heard the phrase (or one like it) that “the trend is…
When “the retirement of the baby boomers is expected to severely cut U.S. stock values in the near future,” is the ominous initial sentence from no lesser maintainer-of-the-status-quo than the San Francisco Fed’s research department, one begins to recognize the Federal Reserve’s overall need to hyper-inflate asset prices at whatever cost for fear of the ‘wealth’ destruction looming….
Common practice in major economies around the world is to publish quarterly estimates of economic output, as the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These figures are given as a relative measure showing the percentage by which the economy has grown or contracted in comparison to the previous quarter. Frequently, growth is estimated for the full year, to…
Euro zone’s celebration of the end of a prolonged recession last year was really short-lived as the region again got itself entrapped in a slowdown and deflation worries from mid 2014. Most of the foremost nations of the continent are presently dragging their feet in terms of economic growth, with some slipping into another recession….
While the rest of the world was preparing to celebrate Christmas, China was busy easing its economy into growth, and its stock market into low earth orbit, by lowering non-bank deposit reserve rates to zero as reported previously, while Japan was enjoying the consequences of the BOJ monetizing 100% of all gross JGB issuance, when…
The 45% collapse in oil prices since mid-June means one thing for certain… The oil industry will adjust its capital spending plans downward to match the current oil climate – particularly for higher-cost projects like the Canadian oil sands. Even for a powerhouse like ExxonMobil (XOM), oil at $65 per barrel means a cash shortfall of $15…
Foreign investors in China should not have any high hopes for the near future. Two years into the leadership of President Xi Jinping, there’s scant indication that the country is opening investment opportunities or rebalancing the economy as foreigners expected. According to analysts, it is unlikely that 2015 will be a better year for economic opportunities. It…
