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Unprecedented! The U.S. economy has failed to thrive under Big GuyÂ’s careful care and tending. First Quarter growth, originally reported to have at the robust pace of 0.2% in the first quarter, actually {{{horrors!}}} shrunk by 0.7%. That was far worse than the agencyÂ’s initial estimate that showed 0.2% growth, marking an abrupt reversal from the prior nine months when growth surged and the economy appeared on the verge of a long-delayed breakout.Long-delayed indeed: the recovery we've HOPEd for has been lurking around the corner for 6 years now. Yes, thereÂ’s light at the end of the tunnel, letÂ’s hope...

If there was any time for American consumers to feel good, it would be this moment. Job growth is brisk. Paychecks are finally nudging up. And a surprise drop in gas prices has given the average household an extra $700 a year. But six years after the end of the Great Recession, Americans are startlingly anxious about their economic prospects. They are sitting on their money in a way that suggests that the consumer psychology may have fundamentally changed, with people less willing to spend than they were during other periods of economic prosperity. Government data released Friday showed that...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. economy went into reverse in the first three months of this year as a severe winter and a widening trade deficit took a harsher toll than initially estimated. The Commerce Department says the overall economy as measured by the gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the January-March period. The revised figure, even weaker than the government's initial estimate of a 0.2 percent growth rate, reflects a bigger trade gap and slower consumer spending. It marked the first decline since a 2.1 percent contraction in the first three months of...

We're about to get some terrible news about the US economy. Sort of. On Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release its second estimate of first quarter GDP, which is expected to show the economy contracted 0.8% in the first quarter. The initial reading on first quarter GDP, released on April 29, showed the economy grew just 0.2%. Ahead of that report, Wall Street expected the economy grew 1% to start 2015. Subsequent data, however, showed that the economy was likely even weaker than first estimated to start the year. Some economists, however, either...

The world economy is disturbingly close to stall speed. The United Nations has cut its global growth forecast for this year to 2.8pc, the latest of the multinational bodies to retreat. It leaves a thin safety buffer against any economic shock - most potently if China abandons its crawling dollar peg and resorts to 'beggar-thy-neighbour' policies, transmitting a further deflationary shock across the global economy. ... Each of the past four US recoveries has been weaker than the last one. The average growth rate has fallen from 4.5pc in the early 1980s to nearer 2pc this time. ... The US...

First-time claims for state unemployment benefits were expected to total 271,000 in the most recent week, up from 264,000 reported a week earlier.

At a time when 8.5 million Americans still don't have jobs, some 40 percent have given up even looking. The revelation, contained in a new survey Wednesday showing how much work needs to be done yet in the U.S. labor market, comes as the labor force participation rate remains mired near 37-year lows. A tight jobs market, the skills gap between what employers want and what prospective employees have to offer, and a benefits program that, while curtailed from its recession level, still remains obliging have combined to keep workers on the sidelines, according to a Harris poll of 1,553...

As the financial crisis of 2008 took shape, the policy recommendations were not slow in coming: why, economic stability and American prosperity demand fiscal and monetary stimulus to jump-start the sick economy back to life. And so we got fiscal stimulus, as well as a program of monetary expansion without precedent in US history. David Stockman recently noted that we have in effect had fifteen solid years of stimulus — not just the high-profile programs like the $700 billion TARP and the $800 billion in fiscal stimulus, but also $4 trillion of money printing and 165 out of 180 months...

Coming on the heels of weak retail sales and producer inflation data, the reports stoked concerns that the U.S. economy is hardly gaining momentum after disappointing 0.2 percent annualized growth in January-March. "U.S. GDP will likely be revised down in the next update to show a contraction. We estimate the U.S. economy shrank 0.9 percent," said Shuji Shirota, head of macro economics strategy group at HSBC in Tokyo.

About 10% of adults of working age have at best marginal ties with the economy ___ Last month, when Baltimore was burning after a young African-American man died in police custody (six officers were subsequently charged), I did a Google search to find what David Simon thought about it. Simon, a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, was the creator and show runner of “The Wire,” which ran for five seasons on HBO and which Entertainment Weekly called the greatest television show ever. It was a brilliant narrative of the struggle for survival in a violent, drug-riddled Baltimore neighborhood much...

The U.S. economy had a really bad March, the worst since the financial crisis. But don’t panic.The broadest gauge of U.S. economic output, from the Commerce Department, tracks the economy on a quarterly basis. The private forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers provides a measure to track gross domestic product on a monthly basis, highlighting some of the volatility that gets smoothed out in the official quarterly figures.Macroeconomic Advisers on Thursday said its monthly estimate showed GDP fell an inflation-adjusted 1% in March, the largest drop since December 2008, “when the U.S. economy was in the throes of recession,” the firm said. Monthly GDP...

Majorities of voters feel the country is still in recession, think terrorists are living in their hometown and rate the Obama White House handling of the government as incompetent. Those are some of the findings from the latest Fox News poll released Thursday. Six in 10 voters think it is likely terrorists are living in their hometown (60 percent). That’s up from 48 percent who felt that way in 2007, the last time the question was asked, and back to about what it was nine months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In June 2002, 58 percent thought terrorists were in...

NEW YORK, May 14 (Reuters) - U.S. corporate spending on capital projects could fall this year to the lowest level since 2011, with steep reductions by the energy industry and companies in other sectors cutting spending amid broad concerns about global growth. Among the S&P sectors, only the materials and financials sectors expect to spend more in 2015 than they did last year, according to a Thomson Reuters analysis of spending outlooks from the 255 S&P 500 companies that have offered guidance on their capex for the year.

HSBC chief economist Stephen King is already thinking about the next recession. In a note to clients Wednesday, he warns: "The world economy is like an ocean liner without lifeboats. If another recession hits, it could be a truly titanic struggle for policymakers." Here's King (emphasis added): Whereas previous recoveries have enabled monetary and fiscal policymakers to replenish their ammunition, this recovery — both in the US and elsewhere — has been distinguished by a persistent munitions shortage. This is a major problem. In all recessions since the 1970s, the US Fed funds rate has fallen by a minimum of...

Zero Hedge first brought attention to the Atlanta Fed over two months ago, when the first massive divergence between bullish consensus and objective reality appeared. Since then it has been nothing but a downhill race for reality, with consensus scrambling to catch up. Moments ago, the Atlanta Fed just cut its Q2 GDP forecast once more, this time to 0.7% from 0.8%. This is on the back of a Q1 GDP which as of this moments is around -1.0%. From the Atlanta Fed: The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of...

The evidence continues to mount..."Most since Lehman" has become the new meme for macro-economic data in the US as day after day brings another lacklustre superlative to be dismissed with some excuse by the cognoscenti of sell-side economists...  Of course, that is aside from anything related to aggregate jobs that is spewed by the government's official ministries of truth... (do not look at this chart)*  *  *So here are seven charts that scream "recession" is here...Retail Sales are weak - extremely weak. Retail Sales have not dropped this much YoY outside of a recession... And if Retail Sales are weak, then...

It seems almost ungrateful to complain about the announcement that the U.S. added 223,000 jobs to the economy in April, dropping the official unemployment rate to 5.4 percent, particularly after the dismal showing in March. Economists saw those numbers as reason for a “sigh of relief,” as one put it. But the truth is that for many American workers, the jobs recovery hasn’t yet provided real relief — and there is still a lot of ground to cover before the country can be said to have truly recovered the losses from the Great Recession. The labor force participation rate remains...

Regrets, he’s had a few. But most of them have had to do with the rosy picture he painted of what the economy would look like following a swift infusion of “Obamanomics.” The president spent much of his time on the post-campaign campaign trail in 2009 promising that the unprecedented sum of money passed by Congress as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus) would have a speedy and positive effect on the economy. Roads, bridges, and “shovel-ready” jobs would quickly put Americans back to work. When that massive sum of borrowed money failed to have...

One of the great mysteries about the U.S. economy today is the discrepancy between the objective and subjective pictures we have of the middle class. The numbers say that the middle class is doing OK or even improving its lot; middle class families themselves say they're being crushed under economic hobnail boots. ..... They combine the approaches and solve the mystery. In effect, they've shifted from defining middle class as merely anyone earning a middle-income to defining the class as a fairly stable demographic group and looking at how it's doing relative to middle income. By defining the middle class...

(excerpt from)    Something weird is going on in the US economy, and it's not good...Despite experiencing a healthy pace of job growth, the US economy has largely disappointed economists' expectations by delivering a series of weaker-than-expected economic reports. The unexpected plunges in retail sales and durable goods orders stand out as they reflect weakness in both consumers and businesses. On Wednesday, Bloomberg LP Chief Economist Michael McDonough tweeted a chart of the unprecedented divergence between job growth and retail sales growth. This is concerning as personal consumption accounts for roughly 70% of US GDP. It's particularly concerning considering all...