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There's a lot of economic anxiety in America today, so it's no surprise that the Federal Reserve has discovered substantial pessimism about Americans' own personal financial situation. The Feds most recent survey shows that 1/3 of Americans believe themselves to be worse off 5 years after the recession ended.Wall Street Journal: More American households say they are worse off  rather than better five years after the recession, a new Federal Reserve survey found. The report, released for the first time on Thursday, found 34% of households said they were “somewhat worse” or “much worse” financially in 2013 compared to 2008....

Perhaps this explains that “you’re dead to me” look in Big Guy’s eyes while toasting his guests at Tuesday’s State dinner: To the dictators! Long may we not “just be standing around.” Or if that’s not it, maybe it’s because of this: A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that despite the steady pace of hiring in recent months, 76% of adults lack confidence that their children's generation will have a better life than they do—an all-time high. Some 71% of adults think the country is on the wrong track, a leap of 8 points from a June survey,...

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly referred to as food stamps) has seen a meteoric rise in enrollment in the last fifteen years, and especially in the wake of the 2008 recession. The spike in SNAP recipients post-2008 is to be expected - but the maintenance of those high enrollment numbers is an anomaly. American Enterprise Institute scholar Robert Doar testified before the House Committee on Agriculture recently to examine this exact question. Doar notes that changes in the SNAP program that took place during this time period may disincentivize work requirements - and keep SNAP participation among working-age...

Corporate America can learn a lot from a chicken burrito. As many companies struggle to boost prices without alienating consumers, they may want to study Mexican-food chain Chipotle, which has managed to do both. Companies including Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc (CMG.N), Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and PepsiCo (PEP.N) have shown they're able to take advantage of quality, trendiness, and, in the case of Pepsi's snack foods, market dominance, to maintain high prices or even raise them faster than the inflation rate, now at about 2.1 percent in the U.S. Chipotle raised chicken-dish prices by 5 percent this year after leaving them...

Beneath all of the bogus economic data, the US economy is tanking again. One of the biggest games played by the bean counters in Washington in the US is the overstatement of GDP growth by understating inflation. Consider this simple example. Let’s say that the US GDP grew by 10% last year. Now let’s say that inflation also grew by 10%. In this scenario, real inflation adjusted GDP growth was ZERO. However, announcing ZERO GDP growth is a major problem politically. So what do the Feds do? They claim that inflation was just 8%, and BOOM you’ve got 2% GDP...

Once again we were spot on. Because as the DOL just reported, yet again the fate of the US economy is left to seasonal adjustments. Non-seasonally-adjusted initial jobless claims surged over 47,000 this week to its worst in 6-months. But by the magic of PhD adjustment, this translated into 3,000 seasonally-adjusted drop from last week, beating expectations and printing near 'recovery' cycle lows. We can only imagine the adjustments needed to cope with Microsoft's layoffs. 2014 has seen the smallest percentage drop in initial claims since the crisis began.

Back in 2013, Williams predicted that it would be “game over” in 2014. What are the statistics showing him now? Williams says, “They are showing the economy continues to weaken, and it never recovered. A second quarter contraction here would most assuredly be recognized as a new recession, and I contend we never got out of the old recession. We had plunge, stagnation and, now, we are turning down anew.”

There are very few market indicators that can predict recessions without sending out false positives. The yield curve is one of them. At a breakfast earlier today, LPL Financial's Jeffrey Kleintop noted that the yield curve inverted just prior to every U.S. recession in the past 50 years. "That is seven out of seven times — a perfect forecasting track record," he reiterated. The yield curve is inverted when short-term interest rates (e.g. the 3-year Treasury) are higher than long-term interest rates (e.g. the 10-year Treasury yield). "The yield curve inversion usually takes place about 12 months before the start...

History suggests that previously sound assumptions about financial security and recession-proof sectors may not apply in the next recession. Nobody wants to lose their job in a recession, but that's what happens when credit tightens, profits fall and tax revenues decline. Every enterprise that can't borrow unlimited sums of money at near-zero interest rates has to cut costs, and since labor and labor overhead (pension contributions, healthcare insurance, etc.) are the biggest expense for the vast majority of enterprises (including government agencies), payroll must be trimmed one way or another: either by lay-offs or by attrition, i.e. not hiring replacements for...

The first quarter contraction, especially our corrected number, implies a second quarter negative real GDP. In other words, the years of Quantitative Easing (money printing) by the Federal Reserve has not resulted in economic recovery from the 2008 downturn and has not prevented further contraction.

Why do bad things always happen to him? Last week, the establishment press largely shrugged off the awful and ominous news that the economy shrank at an annual rate of 2.9 percent [1] during this year’s first quarter. When they deigned to notice it, they usually told their readers, listeners and viewers that happy days have now returned.Unfortunately, the reported contraction is historically foreboding: The 5.5-point downward swing from the fourth quarter’s 2.6 percent annualized growth to the first quarter’s 2.9 percent contraction was the largest such move from expansion to decline since the fourth quarter of 1981 [2].Since...

According to the just released European employment data for May, total Spain unemployment remained unchanged in May at 25.1%, while youth unemployment has actually risen to 54.0% - the highest since January! That's ok though: aside from the facts, onc is welcome to "believe" whatever headlines one wants to believe. And speaking of "recovery", here is what unemployment across Europe looked like as of May.

If you’re a typical family, you’re considerably poorer than you used to be. No wonder the “recovery” feels like a recession. A new study published by the Russell Sage foundation helps explain why many families feel like they’re falling behind: They actually are. The study, which measures the average wealth of U.S. households by income level, reveals a startling decline in wealth nationwide. The median household in 2013 had a net worth of just $56,335 -- 43% lower than the median wealth level right before the recession began in 2007, and 36% lower than a decade ago. “There are very...

In the first quarter of 2014, GDP shrunk 2.9 percent and most of the reason is because health-care spending declined. That doesn’t mean we’re in for a recession though. Obamacare did help crash the economy. Only not in the way its critics thought it would. The Commerce Department on Wednesday revised the growth figures for the first quarter of 2014, and concluded that the economy shrunk at a 2.9 percent annual rate. This comes a month after the government slashed its initial estimate from an annual growth rate of .1 percent to a decline of 1.0 percent. At the time,...

If you’re a typical family, you’re considerably poorer than you used to be. No wonder the “recovery” feels like a recession. ... The median household in 2013 had a net worth of just $56,335 -- 43% lower than the median wealth level right before the recession began in 2007, and 36% lower than a decade ago.

The economy is in a recession in effect if one quarter GDP (Gross Domestic Product/economic activity) wipes out the gains of the previous quarter. You do not need officially two consecutive quarters of a flat or minus GDP headline to be called a recession. Instead, as occurred in Q1 (first quarter of) 2008, one quarter GDP was so bad that it wiped out the weak gains of the previous quarter (Q4 2007). Result? The official start of the last recession was Q4 2007 despite the fact that only one quarter was in a minus. Well, Q1 of 2014 wiped out...

This country is a bunch of lions led by donkeys, as the Germans said about the English Army in the first war. The latest Obama-related bray is the revised GDP numbers for the first quarter. Economists expected the economy to grow by 1.9% even after a discount for the cold weather. Instead the initial estimate saw a contraction of 1%. As we approached the revision to the initial estimate, we began hearing that perhaps things would be even worse in the next estimate. They were. The revision came in at a contraction of 2.9% for the first quarter. But...

For months the administration, financial pundits and Wall Street analysts made it a point to inform Americans about the healthy state of our economy. One of the key metrics they’ve used as proof of recovery was the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which measures the productive output of the U.S. economy as a whole. Earlier this year the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis noted that this measure was showing positive growth. But now, after a second official revision, all of that purported growth used to goad consumers into spending more money on homes, cars and other goods has been revealed to...

The U.S. economy contracted at a much steeper pace than previously estimated in the first quarter, but there are indications that growth has since rebounded strongly. The Commerce Department said on Wednesday gross domestic product fell at a 2.9 percent annual rate, the economy's worst performance in five years, instead of the 1.0 percent pace it had reported last month. While the economy's woes have been largely blamed on an unusually cold winter, the magnitude of the revisions suggest other factors at play beyond the weather. Growth has now been revised down by a total of 3.0 percentage points since...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When the government updates its estimate Wednesday of how the U.S. economy fared last quarter, the number is pretty sure to be ugly. Horrible even. The economy likely shrank at an annual rate of nearly 2 percent in the January-March quarter, economists estimate. That would be its bleakest performance since early 2009 in the depths of the Great Recession. So why aren't economists, businesses or investors likely to panic? Because most agree that the economy last quarter was depressed by temporary factors - particularly the blast of Arctic chill and snow that shuttered factories, disrupted shipping and...