Free Republic

Scott Minerd, Guggenheim Partners December 18, 2014 Plunging oil markets and faltering growth expectations around the world have raised fears about the sustainability of the current U.S. economic expansion. The economic data, though, suggest that these fears are largely unfounded. The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index, which is made up of 10 forward-looking economic and financial indicators, has not fallen since January and has been gaining momentum throughout the year. (snip)

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Frank Walsh still pays dues to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but more than four years have passed since his name was called at the union hall where the few available jobs are distributed. Mr. Walsh, his wife and two children live on her part-time income and a small inheritance from his mother, which is running out. Sitting in the food court at a mall near his Maryland home, he sees some of the restaurants are hiring. He says he can’t wait much longer to find a job. But he’s not ready yet. “I’d work for...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's economic contraction in July-September was deeper than initially expected on declines in capital expenditure, according to revised data on Monday that backs Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent decision to delay a second sales tax hike. The data indicated that the hit from April's sales tax hike turned out to be bigger than expected. Abe, who has called a snap poll for Sunday, hopes voters will agree that his stimulus policies and a decision to delay a second sales tax hike next year will revive a sputtering economy.

Tomas Hirst December 2, 2014Russia's Economy Ministry has downgraded its GDP forecast for the country in 2015 from 1.2% growth to a 0.8% contraction. In other words, the country is falling into a recession. The net amount of foreign capital expected to flow out of the country in 2014 has been revised sharply upward to $125 billion (up from $100 billion), while the projection of net outflows for next year has also been increased, to $90 billion from $50 billion. The independent Russian news agency Interfax reports Deputy Economic Development Minister Alexei Vedev as saying that the downgrade reflects the...

Japan's economy unexpectedly slipped into recession in the third quarter, setting the stage for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to delay an unpopular sales tax hike and call a snap election two years before he has to go to the polls. The recession comes nearly two years after Abe returned to power promising to revive the economy with his "Abenomics" mix of massive monetary stimulus, spending and reforms, and is unwelcome news for an already shaky global economy. Gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by an annualised 1.6 percent in July-September, after plunging 7.3 percent in the second quarter following a rise...

Japan reported Monday that its economy contracted at a real annual rate of 1.6 percent in July-September, in a second straight quarterly decline that returned the country to recession. A 24.1 percent plunge in private residential investment from a year earlier failed to offset a modest recovery in exports and a 1.5 percent increase in household spending. Most economists had forecast that the world’s third-biggest economy would expand at about a 2 percent pace. The negative growth figure was much lower than expected and makes it very likely Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will delay implementation of a sales tax hike...

Wal-Mart stores Inc issued an "urgent agenda" memo to its store managers across the United States last month, laying out guidelines to boost sales of "chilled and fresh" food, the New York Times reported. The memo, marked "highly sensitive", asks Wal-Mart marketing managers to make sure they discount aging meat and baked goods to maximize chances of selling them before their expiration dates, according to the report. Wal-Mart, which has posted six straight quarters of flat or declining same-store sales growth, has been battling a stronger dollar and a reduction in U.S. food stamp benefits, which has eaten into...

Elena Holodny November 10, 2014A small firm that predicted the market crash back in 1929 is back with an ominous message. According to Bloomberg, the Jerome Levy Forecasting center sees a 65% chance of a recession in 2015. "Clearly the direction of most of the recent global economic news suggest movement toward a 2015 downturn," said David Levy, the chairman of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center. Levy's forecasts contrasts with the Wall Street consensus, which is confident growth will continue for years. Back in 1929, Jerome Levy — grandfather of now chairman David Levy — "didn't like what he saw...

The graph above shows that after years of holding back inflation rates, the rate of housing inflation is boosting the rate of inflation. Month-to-month housing inflation was up 0.3% compared with the overall inflation rate of 0.1%. It's not just a one-month phenomenon, either, as year-over-year shelter price increases were up 3.0% versus 1.7% for the overall rate of inflation. Unfortunately, shelter is the single biggest component of the CPI calculation, so big moves here are magnified. For some perspective, gasoline is 5% and food is 14% of the CPI calculation. The good news is that consumers, with locked-in mortgages,...

Europe faces yet another recession, and the prospect is shaking global financial markets. To eliminate the persistent threat of collapse, Europe must drop the euro, and Germany must abandon mercantilism. When the euro was adopted in 1999, domestic prices -- the face values for bonds and loans -- and bank accounts were translated into euros according to prevailing exchange rates for national currencies at the time. Initially, the single currency posed few significant problems. Over time, however, differences in labor market policies and geographic conditions that are difficult for governments to alter caused productivity to grow more rapidly in Germany...

Here we go again. Another sovereign debt crisis on the periphery of the EU is underway and many of the same factors that led to previous debt meltdowns are present. Germany is headed for a triple dip recession. Continent-wide deflation is nearly a reality. And many EU nations are smashing the debt limits demanded by treaty, thus threatening the Euro itself. All of this is impacting the percentage of debt in relation to GDP in several countries, making government bonds more expensive and debt servicing a nightmare. The Hill: Among Europe's most recent economic tremors has been the growing evidence...

Germany’s exports are falling at the fastest rate since the global crisis in 2009, raising fears of a triple-dip recession and a disastrous relapse for the rest of the eurozone. The country’s five economic institutes - or "Wise Men" - slashed their growth forecast for Germany from 2pc to 1.2pc next year, warning that the latest measures unveiled by the European Central Bank will add “hardly any” extra stimulus to the real economy and may be unworkable. Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, warned that the eurozone is at “serious risk” of falling back into recession if...

Eurozone in danger of repeating Japanese stagnation, IMF chief warns By Benjamin Fox BRUSSELS - International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde has warned that the eurozone risks following Japan and falling into a prolonged cycle of recession and stagnation. Speaking on Thursday (9 October) ahead of the IMF's annual meeting in Washington DC, Lagarde said: “We have also alerted to the risk of recession in the eurozone", putting the likelihood of a drop in output at "between 35-40%, which is not insignificant". “We are not saying that the eurozone is heading towards recession, but we are saying that there is...

Tyler Durden 10/07/2014Yesterday it was German manufacturing orders which cratered 5.7% in August following a freak, 4.9% rebound in July, prompting Goldman to warn that "the underlying dynamic has weakened further at the end of Q3" ... ... And then a few hours ago we finally got undeniable confirmation that Europe is once again in recession, its third since Lehman, only this one is worse: it is led by the "core" countries, with Germany in the forefront, a Germany which just reported industrial output which suffered its biggest monthly decline in more than five years in August. Specifically, German IP...

The Great Recession has lasted a lot longer for some than for others. A new survey from Rutgers University’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development found that “one in five workers - or nearly 30 million people - say they were laid off from a job in the past five years," dating back to the end of the recession in June 2009. "Nearly 4 in 10 of these laid-off workers say they searched for a job for more than seven months before finding another one; one in five workers laid off during the past five years never found another...

The rationalizations for Obama’s failures are already beginning, and Tom Friedman employs the laziest of all strategies, tearing down a great man to make a small man look bigger. In his Sunday column in the New York Times, Friedman makes a number of highly dubious points. These days there is a lot of “if-only-Obama-could-lead-like-Reagan” talk by conservatives. I’ll leave it to historians to figure out years from now who was the better president. On the question of the domestic economy, there can be little doubt. Reagan inherited far higher unemployment and high inflation, and within a year or so had...

Every three years the Federal Reserve releases a survey of consumer finances that is a stockpile of data on everything from household net worth to incomes. The 2013 survey confirms statements I have made previously regarding the Fed's monetary interventions leaving the majority of Americans behind: "While the ongoing interventions by the Federal Reserve have certainly boosted asset prices higher, the only real accomplishment has been a widening of the wealth gap between the top 10% of individuals that have dollars invested in the financial markets and everyone else. What monetary interventions have failed to accomplish is an increase in production...

Citing a paper released this week by the St. Louis Federal Reserve, Vice-President Joe Biden blamed American consumers for the sluggish economy. “The government is doing everything it can to try to stimulate the economy,” Biden contended. “The federal government is spending every dollar it can get its hands on. The Federal Reserve is manufacturing new dollars at an unprecedented pace. But consumers are just sitting on their cash.” “Hoarding cash makes no sense,” the Veep argued. “The dollar’s purchasing power is being diluted on a daily basis by government policies. Spending your dollars before they lose even more value...

Cullen Roche Wednesday, August 27th, 2014 Talk about a flip in perspective. David Rosenberg, who had been bearish for years, has turned into one of the biggest bulls on Wall Street. The Gluskin Sheff analyst now says his recession forecasting model could be pointing to another four years of economic expansion (via a recent note of his): (snip)

As it turns out, the media shark jumping thing may have started earlier than I originally thought. The Washington Post took a small leap earlier this year with their editorial: “President Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy.”And earlier this summer Charles Krauthammer criticized what he called Big Guy’s “John Lennon, bumper-sticker foreign policy — Imagine World Peace” ; saying it demonstrated “wish-as-policy fecklessness from our bystander president” Due to continuing ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Boka Haram, et al, barbarism, the illusion of peace is experiencing technical difficulties. Still, accusing el Presidente of living in fantasy land is going...