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Tyler Durden 02/16/2015 You know things are bad in the ship-building business when... amid considerably larger than expected losses, China's COSCO announced that it has dis-assembled 8 vessels in January alone (including 3 bulk carriers) and will be decommissioning and disposing of them as it awaits a "more conducive" environment. It appears that is not coming anytime soon, as The Baltic Dry Index just hit 522 - a new all-time low (down a stunning 53 of the last 55 days). As COSCO explains in its HKSE Statement:(snip)

Moody's Say's Cheaper Oil WILL NOT Boost Global Growth... What have I been saying all along... Someone should tell the morons at CNBC... Lower oil prices will fail to give a "significant boost" to global growth in the next two years, Moody's has said. The ratings agency said any boost from cheaper oil would be offset by the eurozone's economic woes as well as slowdowns in China, Japan and Russia. As a result, Moody's said it would not be revising its growth forecasts for the G20 countries. "For the G20 economies, we expect GDP growth of just under 3% each...

Two phrases that Daniel Patrick Moynihan put into America’s political lexicon two decades ago are increasingly pertinent. They explain the insufficient dismay about recent economic numbers. Moynihan said that when deviant behaviors — e.g., violent crime, or births to unmarried women — reach a certain level, society soothes itself by “defining deviancy down.” It de-stigmatizes the behaviors by declaring them normal. And sometimes, Moynihan said, social problems are the result of “iatrogenic government.” In medicine, an iatrogenic ailment is inadvertently induced by a physician or medicine; in social policy, iatrogenic problems are caused by government. When the economy grew by...

US GDP growth fell short of expectations in last year's fourth quarter, the government reports. National output increased 2.6% in the final three months of 2014 vs. the previous quarter (seasonally adjusted annual rate). The consensus forecast was looking for something better—a 3.2% rise, according to Econoday.com's survey of economists. The soft number for headline growth in Q4 is a bit surprising when you look at the statistical elephant in the room, namely, consumer spending, which accounts for nearly 70% of GDP. Personal consumption expenditures accelerated to a 4.3% pace in the fourth quarter, a handsome improvement over Q3's...

Markit's US Services PMI missed expectations of 53.7, priting at 53.3, its lowest since Feb 2014 (mid Polar Vortex). From record highs in June, PMI has plunged non-stop for six months leaving Markit noting Q4 growth is looking more like 2.0% than the 5.0% exuberance in Q3.US Services PMI plunges... and along with the tumble in manufacturing leaves the US Composite PMI at 14 month lows... It gets worse. From the report, via Chris Williamson, Chief Economist at Markit said:“The US economy lost significant growth momentum at the close of the year. Excluding the drop in activity caused by the October...

The folks over at the New York Times are keeping up their tradition of shilling for big government spending. In a recent column, the Times suggests that a recent uptick in government spending is creating prosperity, and boosting the economy. According to the Times: For a long stretch, government spending cutbacks at all levels were a substantial drag on economic growth. Now, finally, relief is in sight. For the first time since 2011, local, state and federal governments are providing a small but significant increase to prosperity.Yeah… Government is taking your money, spending it on redistributive welfare programs and special interest...

December 26, 2014 by John Hinderaker About that 5% GDP Growth Rate… Just before Christmas, the Commerce Department announced that third quarter GDP growth came in at an upwardly-revised 5% annual rate. Nearly everyone hailed this as wonderful economic news. The New York Times celebrated the apparent return to rapid growth: [H]ere, for the holidays, is the festive news: The economy roared ahead at a 5 percent annual growth rate in the July through September quarter, the fastest quarterly growth since 2003. …The biggest revision that boosted G.D.P. was in personal consumption spending, the biggest engine of overall economic activity,...

The revision which helped create last quarters incredible growth was the forced mandatory costs incurred by the American people from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which accounted for two-thirds of the entire boost in consumer spending. Consumer spending, as opposed to the recording of revenues from actual production and industry which used to be the primary components of economic growth in America, on average accounts for more than 70% of the entire Gross Domestic Product. And if you took out payments made by the American people towards mandatory government healthcare, GDP may have been in negative growth for last quarter,...

On December 23, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the Commerce Department issued its latest revision of U.S. economic growth for the third quarter period (July through September). According to the BEA, the U.S. economy grew at a 5.0% annual rate during that quarter. Unfortunately, the once honorable Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Census Bureau tweaked the quarterly GDP numbers in order to achieve the 5% growth rate. This tweaking was predicted by Tyler Durden of zerohedge.com.When Durden analyzed the final revision for the first quarter back on June 25 (Here's the reason for the total collapse in Q1...

Evidence is mounting that the U.S. economy is kicking into high gear. Gross domestic product soared 5% on an annual basis in the third quarter, the government said on Tuesday. To put that in perspective, it's the strongest quarter of growth since 2003. "Other than the first quarter's weather-induced contraction, there's no doubt the economy has been great this year," said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG. Investors cheered the news, sending the stock market to record highs with the Dow crossing 18,000 for the first time ever.

Fast forward to today when as every pundit is happy to report, the final estimate of Q3 GDP indeed rose by 5% (no really, just as we predicted), with a surge in personal consumption being the main driver of US growth in the June-September quarter. As noted before, between the second revision of the Q3 GDP number and its final print, Personal Consumption increased from 2.2% to 3.2% Q/Q, and ended up contributing 2.21% of the final 4.96% GDP amount, up from 1.51%. So what did Americans supposedly spend so much more on compared to the previous revision released one...

Sam Ro December 23, 2014America is just killing it. Q3 GDP growth was just revised up to 5.0% from last month's estimate of 3.9%. This is the fastest pace of growth since Q3 2003. This was also much stronger than the 4.3% expected by economists. "The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from PCE, nonresidential fixed investment, federal government spending, exports, state and local government spending, and residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased," the BEA said. Personal consumption growth was revised up to 3.2% from 2.2%....

There’s much worrywarting over the new figures from the IMF IMF telling us the fact that China is now the world’s number one economy in terms of size. The truth is though that, other than for collectors of statistical trivia, this really isn’t important. Perhaps on a par with wondering how Lady Gaga is going to dress next but no more than that. Because the whole idea of “an economy” as defined by the borders of a nation state is pretty arbitrary anyway and further, it matters a great deal more how many people that economy is spread over than...

According to figures published by the International Monetary Fund, China has surpassed the US in economic output of real goods and services - a measure widely accepted as a gauge of total economic activity. It's an esoteric measurement, but important because it ignores exchange rates: These calculations are based on a well-established and widely used economic measure known as purchasing-power parity (or PPP), which measures the actual output as opposed to fluctuations in exchange rates. So a Starbucks venti Frappucino served in Beijing counts the same as a venti Frappucino served in Minneapolis, regardless of what happens to be...

The United States recorded a Government Debt to GDP has risen dramatically and remains at peak levels since Obama took office. See chart in linked article. We have been running at roughly just over DOUBLE the GDP in debt.

Paulina Abramovich, AFP December 2, 2014Santiago (AFP) - Latin America's economies, hit by falling investment, will grow just 1.1 percent in 2014 -- their lowest level in five years, a UN commission on the region said Tuesday. The poor performance of several of Latin America's biggest economies dragged down growth across the region, found the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Argentina's economy will contract by 0.2 percent this year and Venezuela's by 3.0 percent, it said. Regional giant Brazil's will grow just 0.2 percent. The figures are the latest confirmation of the end of...

Here's a map from American Enterprise Institute's Mark Perry that puts America's $16 trillion economy in some global perspective. The map compares the GDP of U.S. states with other the national GDPs of other nations.

Sam Ro October 17, 2014The spread of the Ebola virus has been dominating headlines in recent weeks. While the ultimate death toll may be limited, the economic impact could potentially be significant. The "'fear factor' associated with Ebola appears more significant than in past instances of pandemic concern, in our view," Goldman Sachs' Kris Dawsey writes. Dawsey studied how other recent pandemic events ultimately played out in the US and Hong Kong. "Recent episodes of pandemic concern in the US — including SARS in 2003, bird flu (H5N1) in 2005, and swine flu (H1N1) in 2009 — resulted in little...

Tomas Hirst September 30, 2014The hot debate in financial circles at the moment is exactly when the Fed (and/or the Bank of England) will start raising rates as the economic recovery picks up steam. However, the authors of the Geneva Report suggest talk of the crisis being over is seriously premature. Six years on from the financial crisis, people were expecting a global economy less reliant on debt financing and gradually moving back toward trend growth. According to Luigi Buttiglione, Philip Lane, Lucrezia Reichlin, and Vincent Reinhart, we instead have global debt-to-GDP breaking new highs and a permanent decline in...

The previous estimates of economic growth in the second quarter turned out to be a shade too modest. The final estimate of second-quarter growth from the Bureau of Economic Analysis puts the annualized GDP increase at 4.6%, the best quarter in more than two years, and a sharp rebound from Q1′s -2.1%: Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014, according to the “third” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic...