More Consumer Confidence Surprises You’d think that, in the wake of the strong jobs report two weeks ago, surveys of consumer confidence would start showing some improvement. But no, consumer confidence continues to fall. We’ve already had a thorough discussion about the fact that this probably tells us little about consumer spending, but it’s still […]

Capacity Utilization Industry in the US seems to be struggling a bit in their battle to increase capacity utilization. The Fed just released data for March showing capacity utilization down a bit after several months of increases. As usual, I’ll repeat the caveat that one month of data doesn’t mean much – but it’s a […]

Postcards from Old Europe – New meets old We are only about two weeks away from one of the most important things to hit Europe this year. I am of course talking about the upcoming enlargement of the EU. May 1st will see 10 countries enter the European Union. As a result, the EU will […]

Shorter Angry Bear Fred Kaplan in Slate: Throughout that summer, we now well know, Tenet, Richard Clarke, and several other officials were running around with their “hair on fire,” warning that al-Qaida was about to unleash a monumental attack. On Aug. 6, Bush was given the now-famous President’s Daily Brief (by one of Tenet’s underlings), […]

Meetings and Battle Stations I’m beginning to better understand what Richard Clarke meant when he talked about the importance of high level meetings during high threat periods. The latest piece of this unforunate puzzle comes in today’s NYT: George J. Tenet and his deputies at the Central Intelligence Agency were presented in August 2001 with […]

Housing Bubble? Kevin notes a report that the “median [home] sale price [in Los Angeles is] up 29%, to a record $375,000, according to data released Monday” and says I don’t care what anyone says, including the happy talk analysts quoted farther down in the story: this kind of panic buying is a sign of […]

Incredible Via Atrios, from the NYT: ROEMER: Would it have made any difference if you had mentioned — did you ever mention it, for instance, to the president — your briefing the president from August 6th on? TENET:: I didn’t see the president. I was not in briefings with him during this time. He was […]

It’s Your Children’s Money, Quick Take It! WASHINGTON – Uncontrolled U.S. budget deficits would pose a serious threat to global prosperity in coming years as rising interest rates depress economic growth in the United States and around the world, the International Monetary Fund (news – web sites) warned Wednesday. The IMF released a new analysis […]

The Lost Art of Diplomacy In Iraq, the standoff between Sadr’s militias in Najaf and 2500 US Army troops (and their tanks, artillery, and air support) is a tense and extremely dangerous one. However, it looks like some careful diplomacy by an Iranian delegation may be easing the situation there. The Iranians, being from the […]

CPI Release The BLS just released the CPI data for March. It shows a surprisingly large increase in prices: +0.4% for consumer items excluding food and energy. That means that prices have increased over the past 12 months by 1.6%, which is the fastest rate of price increase since mid-2001. Even the chained core CPI […]