Archive for October, 2009

I pass along a link to Krugman’s blog because I think he makes a good point.
One of the more frustrating and amusing aspects of the entire stimulus debate was the apoplectic opposition that could muster nothing but the usual bromides about government spending. So it’s fun to see them all twittering about the success of… »

All of my warnings about the medium term outlook seem to be confirmed by today’s consumer sentiment survey results from the University of Michigan. This is the third, and most frequent, of the surveys that attempt to measure consumer confidence. The data released this morning suggests a modest uptick from early October – the index… »

Not that anyone is truly surprised, given the discussions of the past few weeks, but today’s news that the economy grew by 3.5%, at annual rates, during the third quarter is welcome nonetheless. It breaks a string of four consecutive quarters of decline – five of the last six quarters saw a decline – and… »

Of all the issues facing the economy one stands out as having potential to throw the economy back into crisis. Yes, the lack of consumption may make us fall into a second recession, but that is not a crisis – we know how to deal with it. No, the lack of long term safety and… »

This morning’s news that durable goods orders rose for the fourth month out of the last six adds substantial weight to the expectation that we are well into a recovery. Durable goods are those large expensive things that businesses, particularly factories, use as they ramp up production and other activity.
That sales of durable goods rose… »

Given that only yesterday I was reporting on the Conference Board’s data showing that US consumer confidence had fallen for the second straight month, you can imagine my surprise when I came across a report from Nielsen with the headline: “US Consumer Confidence Up For First Time Since 2007″. The report comes through the Reuters… »

As we wait for the GDP release later this week we are still getting insight into the state of the economy courtesy of the normal flow of lesser data points.
For instance today we learned that home prices edged up 1.2% in August – that came from the Case Schiller index; and that consumer confidence fell… »