By: Daniel Becker In answer to the generic question regarding President Obama’s actions regarding the debt ceiling, I am re-posting this from 2/25/09. In comments of the original I stated that cutting the deficit by 1/2 seemed to “optimistic” for me. *************************** Ok, here are my basic issues with the substance of President Obama’s speech. […]
After the US report on Q2… Angry Bear and credit market weakness in the eurozone, Rebecca takes a look at the retail side of the economy: Retail sales in Germany and Spain were reported last week for the month of June. On a working-day and not-seasonally adjusted basis, real retail sales fell 7.0% on the […]
Bureau of Economic Analysis today reported that real gross domestic product in the US increased at an annual rate of 1.3% in the second quarter of 2011. This (newly revised – see below) acceleration in real GDP was driven primarily by a slowdown in import demand, stronger federal spending, and a pickup in non-residential fixed […]
Next week the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release its estimate of Q2 US GDP growth. Of 69 economists polled, the bloomberg consensus is that the US economy grew at a 1.8% annualized rate spanning the months of April to June over January to March. In all, this quarterly growth rate implies just 1.9% annualized […]
Rebecca Wilder has shifted to publishing her insightful articles on Europe back to her Newsneconomics platform, but will continue to publish on US topics and US/Europe connections on Angry Bear. I think that the shift is smart…the audience for Angry Bear is focused more on the US and as the election cycle is already quite […]
I’m writing a few long posts—you’ve been warned—but that machine doesn’t have Internet access right now.* So I’m just going to point to Kash, who writes about something else: In looking at the data I was struck by how small (relatively) the worldwide market for gold really is. That means that relatively small inflows of […]
It’s now two years after the end of the Great Recession, and the unemployment rate has ticked downward just 9 pps (percentage points) since its 10.1% peak. Pundits call this an expansion since GDP has fully retraced its recession losses; but the unemployment rate tells a very different story. (click to enlarge) The chart illustrates […]
Jobs growth is a lagging indicator of economic activity, so the June report confirms that the US economy has been in a deep rut (Marshall Auerback calls it a ‘fully-fledged New York City style pot hole’). Yes, the US economy is growing; but sub-2% really ‘feels’ like stagnation, if not recession for many. As always, […]
I’ll make this quick, since I’m going to get in trouble for writing on a national holiday. But the pace of annual jobs growth is too slow to generate strong wage and salary income. Much empirical research has been dedicated to the estimation of consumption functions, generally finding that labor income is the primary driver […]
This is why Andrew Leonard (h/t Yves Smith) gets paid for blogging and I don’t. He tries to do the impossible: make sense out of Michelle Bachmann’s “economics“: 1) The interest can easily be paid for … Bachmann is making the argument here that the U.S. can choose to pay its creditors — the various […]