Free Republic

Reflections on the last State of the Union Address from Barack Hussein Obama… The modern Democratic Party has made no secret of the fact that they detest the free market. No, not dislike, not disrespect, not even misunderstand... they detest the free market. From Secretary Hillary Clinton haughtily declaring to Senator Bernie Sanders famously declaring that 23 brands of deodorant are … the leading lights of the modern Democratic Party are dim bulbs indeed, when it comes to economics. They proudly refuse to understand the subject, and they set themselves up as superior to its realities. It has long been...

It's hard not to wonder: Is the stock market telling us something? True, the market's record in forecasting recessions is horrendous. Stocks often move according to whim or fad. But just because the market is wrong much of the time doesn't mean it's wrong all the time. Could last week's turbulent trading be one of the times it's right? By Friday's close, stocks had dropped 6% for the week, a paper loss of $1.5 trillion, says Wilshire Associates. Are we staring at the next recession? The selloff originated in China with a weaker-than-expected report on manufacturing activity. This triggered a...

Last week, I received news from a contact who is friends with one of the biggest billionaire shipping families in the world. He told me they had no ships at sea right now, because operating them meant running at a loss. This weekend, reports are circulating saying much the same thing: The North Atlantic has little or no cargo ships traveling in its waters. Instead, they are anchored. Unmoving. Empty.

It's hard not to wonder: Is the stock market telling us something? True, the market's record in forecasting recessions is horrendous. Stocks often move according to whim or fad. But just because the market is wrong much of the time doesn't mean it's wrong all the time. Could last week's turbulent trading be one of the times it's right?... Behind this chain reaction is a huge transfer of economic power from advanced countries (mainly North America, Europe and Japan) to "emerging-market"... The trouble is that their growth is slowing... One is high debt levels... The other problem is the legacy...

US factory orders have never dropped this far for so long without the US economy overall being in recession. November's 4.2% YoY drop is the 13th consecutive monthly drop. Revisions to durable goods data shows a 1% drop in new orders ex-defense in November after rising 1.4% in October.. and as a reminder, this data was buoyed by a 46.9% surge in defense aircraft and parts orders to all-time highs. Factory Orders are flashing deep red recessionary indicators...

On Monday, December 28, 2015, Chicagoland was hit by a particularly unpleasant ice storm. No, not a blizzard – we get them every year – this was an ice storm, the kind where you’re peppered by tiny bits of ice as you walk or run to your car, the kind that leaves inches of slush and ice on the ground instead of nice soft snow. The kind that’s even more painful, even more dangerous, than most snowstorms. The kind that weighs down power lines, causing them to collapse and leave whole towns without power. It wasn’t the worst of the...

If you regularly drive north from Chicago to Milwaukee on I-94, as I do, you have watched Amazon’s Kenosha distribution center grow by leaps and bounds. The parking lot is full, day and night, as it is in online retailers’ similar facilities all over the country nowadays. They may be on the outskirts of a metro like the Kenosha one, or in the heart of town, like Amazon’s 26 urban fulfillment centers in Houston, New York, San Francisco, Miami and Atlanta, often saving a blighted neighborhood by new construction and new jobs that no other business could justify bringing there....

A surprisingly large share of Americans are in a precarious financial state, according to a new, detailed study from The Pew Charitable Trust. For its study, Pew sampled nearly 8,000 individuals, and it found that the typical American household’s finances have not recovered in any substantial way since the downturn, especially in regards to income, savings and covering emergency expenses. Pew’s conclusions have strong implications for the future of housing, so we have spotlighted several of the study’s most notable findings: 1. Income Instability – For the typical U.S. family, earnings have grown just 2 percent from 1999 to 2009, and more than half of U.S....

... It's fueling financial turmoil on Wall Street with Standard & Poor's Ratings Service recently warning that a stunning 50% of energy junk bonds are "distressed," meaning they are at risk of default. Overall, about $180 billion of debt is distressed. It's the highest level since the end of the Great Recession and much of it is in energy companies. ... Not a repeat of 2008...

The outlook for the global economy next year is darkening, with a U.S. recession and China becoming the first major emerging market to slash interest rates to zero both potential scenarios, according to Citi. As the U.S. economy enters its seventh year of expansion following the 2008-09 crisis, the probability of recession will reach 65 percent, Citi's rates strategists wrote in their 2016 outlook published late on Tuesday. A rapid flattening of the bond yield curve towards inversion would be an key warning sign.

If you recall, the popular storyline since late last year has been that the U.S. economy is moderately improving while the world’s other major economies – Japan, China, and Europe – are rolling over. The U.S. economy would power through. Moreover, stock prices had achieved a permanently high plateau.

Over the past year we have regularly contended that a far greater threat to the global economy than either corporate earnings, currency devaluations, rate cuts (or hikes), reserve outflow, or even the stock market, is the sudden, global trade crunch which has been deteriorating rapidly since late 2014 and has seen an even more dramatic drop off as 2015 is winding down. Actually, that is incorrect: global trade is merely a manifestation of the true state of the above listed items. ... We have in the past joked that the only thing that could possibly save the world from what...

Akin OyedeleOctober 31, 2015We recently detailed why some economists are spooked about the economy. Harvard professor Larry Summers also noted that the consensus of economists has failed to forecast a recession one year in advance in post-war America. So, once again, we may not know for sure until we are really close to an economic downturn, or even in one. However, it doesn't exactly look like we're there. If you were, however, trying to build a case that we're near recession, the manufacturing sector is where you'd start. It's A Services Economy "We are seeing questions come up as to...

U.S. orders for long-lasting goods such as heavy machinery or airplanes fell in September for the second month in a row, offering little evidence that manufacturers are ready to rebound after a prolonged bout of softness. Durable-goods orders fell a fell a seasonally adjusted 1.2% in September following an even sharper 3% decline in the prior month, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Previously the government had said orders dropped 2.3% in August.

As this is championship season in sports (yes, it’s always championship season for some sport), let’s begin our discussion with a sports analogy. Over the course of a game, we have seen our beloved Home team riddled with injuries. Our star players have been physically and emotionally clobbered, as the Visitors have used every tool at their disposal against us, regardless of the rule book. They tripped and tackled our starters, given us two broken legs and three broken arms, driving five of our best out of the game. Kicking our boys during time outs, shooting darts from dart guns,...

During HSBC's Global Investment Seminar in New York this week, Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers brought up secular stagnation. In 2013, Summers revived the phrase, which, over time, has come to mean all sorts of things to different people. But at its core, secular stagnation refers to a global economy growing at a slow rate because there is too much saving and not enough investment. And right now, a lot of savings (and other monies) are heading out of emerging markets and into the developed world. "I would suggest that the defining financial development of the last year is...

When the global economy is doing well, the amount of stuff that is imported and exported around the world goes up, and when the global economy is in recession, the amount of stuff that is imported and exported around the world goes down. It is just basic economics. Governments around the world have become very adept at manipulating other measures of economic activity such as GDP, but the trade numbers are more difficult to fudge. Today, China accounts for more global trade than anyone else on the entire planet, and we have just learned that Chinese exports and Chinese imports...

The biggest bank in the western world has just come out and declared that the global economy is “already in a recession”. According to British banking giant HSBC, global trade is down 8.4 percent so far this year, and global GDP expressed in U.S. dollars is down 3.4 percent. So those that are waiting for the next worldwide economic recession to begin can stop waiting. It is officially here. As you will see below, money is fleeing emerging markets at a blistering pace, major global banks are stuck with huge loans that will never be repaid, and it looks like...

Everybody knows that “greedy bankers” were to blame for the Crash of 2008. The Democrats and their willing accomplices told us that years ago and they are sticking to their story. But there is another suspect that ought to be right in the dock along with the bankers. Its mild-mannered name is “agency debt.” It’s the debt of federal agencies and government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that is not included in the National Debt. In other words, when you go to the U.S. Treasury’s Debt to the Penny page, and find that on September 27, 2015 the debt was $18,151,073,031,331.50 you...

THE PHILIPPINES appears least vulnerable to major risks that could darken the economic growth outlook and affect the sovereign credit scores of emerging markets, debt watcher Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said in a new report. In a Sept. 29 report, titled: “Who’s at Risk? Emerging Market Sovereigns are Facing Adverse Global Trends,” S&P cited three risks on the growth prospects of 22 emerging economies: capital outflows from developing to advanced markets once the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates, unwinding of domestic credit built up in recent years and China’s economic growth slowdown. Among 22 markets it assessed, the Philippines...