Free Republic

DOUBLING DOWN ON RECESSION The United States economy had its last severe turn for the worse in November of 2006, when Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats won their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The country immediately dipped into recession, which Barack Obama’s election two years later locked in for good. Historically, recessions are followed by economic growth, including heavy GDP increases and sufficient job creation to rehire people who lost their jobs in the last recession. The Obama administration expected the same to happen this time, apparently not realizing that their policies made it impossible. We have therefore seen an...

Jul 29, 2016 John Mauldin The next recession is coming, and it will be severe. My friend Ed Easterling of Crestmont Research just updated his Economic Cycle Dashboard and sent me a personal email with some of his thoughts. Here is his chart (click on it to see a larger version). The current expansion is the fourth longest since 1954… but also the weakest. Since 1950, average annual GDP growth in recovery periods has been 4.3%. This time, average GDP growth has been only 2.1% for the seven years following the Great Recession. That means the economy has grown a...

Hillary Clinton has made clear she intends to dramatically raise taxes on the American people if elected. She has proposed an income tax increase, a business tax increase, a death tax increase, a capital gains tax increase, a tax on stock trading, and an Exit Tax, and more (see below). Her planned net tax increase on the American people is at least $1 trillion over ten years, based on her campaign’s own figures. Hillary has endorsed many tax increases on that would hit middle income Americans, despite her pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $250,000....

Most people are convinced that the government is a drag on the economy, that it should not be allowed to spend any more money. They believe that we’ve spent far too much as it is. Therefore, they believe we must pay for our sins and spend less. It’ll be tough for a few years, they admit. But soon we’ll be back in the laissez-faire garden of Eden. That argument is dangerously wrong. It’s like someone taking a hot air balloon high up in the sky, then suddenly panicking because he’s too high. So he decides to turn off the hot...

Michael Snyder June 23rd, 2016 When less stuff is being bought, sold and shipped around the country with each passing month, how in the world can the U.S. economy be in “good shape”? Unlike official government statistics which are often based largely on projections, assumptions and numbers seemingly made up out of thin air, the Cass Freight index is based on real transactions conducted by real shipping companies. And what the Cass Freight Index is telling us about the state of the U.S. economy in 2016 lines up perfectly with all of the other statistics that are clearly indicating that...

Jun 21, 2016 Harry_Dent We all know the situation in the markets is dire. Like, really, everyone knows. There’s an old phrase from Margaret Thatcher’s day (and mine, I suppose) that has recently come back into use: There is no alternative. There’s even an acronym: TINA. There is no alternative example of a campaign advertising material of the CDU for the 1994 election for the Landtag of Thuringia. That’s quaint, and all, but this meatily numbered piece shows the heart of what that phrase means. There is no alternative, the markets will correct. They have to, regardless of how hard...

Like a crazed serial killer, the liberal green groups are celebrating their “victory” of putting America’s major coal producers out of business — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of miners placed in unemployment lines. Several thousand more mining jobs were lost last month. Now to get their next homicidal high, the leftists have turned their ambitions on the oil and natural gas industries. Here is how the Sierra Club spokeswoman, Lena Moffit, explains the grand, green vision: “We have moved to a very clear and firm and vehement position of opposing gas. We oppose any new gas-fired...

<p>Suppose you are advising Hillary Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. What worries you? Well, probably the stubbornness of Bernie Sanders, who won’t admit he’s lost. And, of course, the unpredictability of Donald Trump, whose outlandish pronouncements defy conventional political wisdom.</p>

f Donald Trump's presidential campaign were functional, this would be Economy Week for Team Trump. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee and his surrogates would be wielding the disappointing May jobs report as a cudgel to bash the lackluster "Obama-Clinton" recovery. After all, polls say jobs and the economy remain voters' biggest concern. And it's an issue in which Trump has a big lead over Clinton. A new Gallup poll gives the famed businessman a 10-point edge on "the economy" and a seven-point lead on "employment and jobs." But Trump isn't talking about the economy. Instead, he's attacking the Mexican heritage...

The May jobs report is a shocker, with nonfarm payrolls up only 38,000 and private jobs up a mere 25,000. Investors and economists are making the case that this was a weird, one-off, statistical glitch and that stronger employment is on the way. They might well be wrong. If you smooth out the numbers with a three-month moving average, job increases have been slowing for five months. The three-month pace in December was 281,000 jobs. In the May report, the pace nosedived to 107,000. The unemployment rate fell to 4.7%, largely because 458,000 people left the labor force. This spells...

Macy's dismal first-quarter results are bringing back unwelcome memories of the financial crisis, as the retailer on Wednesday reported two metrics that harken back to that period of economic malaise. During the first quarter, the department store chain said its comparable sales fell 5.6 percent. That marks a deceleration from its fourth-quarter same-store sales decline of 4.3 percent, and represents its most severe decrease in this metric since the second quarter of 2009. During that quarter, Macy's comparable sales slid 9.5 percent. Meanwhile, the retailer reported a 36 percent year-over-year drop in operating income. That not only marks its seventh...

When the government jobs and economy report was released last Friday, it wasn’t quite as rosy as we’ve been led to believe: Economist Herbert Stein famously observed, "If something cannot continue, it will stop." Given other readings on the economy, the rapid growth in jobs that was reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for 4Q2015 and 1Q2016 could not continue. So, in April, it stopped. [ed. in other words, we lied about jobs growth,again.] Telling lies with statistics is so easy even a politician can do itFriday's BLS "Employment Situation" report was terrible. FTE* employment fell by 296,000,...

Who could have seen this coming? Remember a week ago when TV entertainers crowed about the surge in The Baltic Dry Freight Index was a "clear signal" that 'China is back' baby and that escape velocity growth was just around the corner as global growth was destined to pick up... Well, just as we warned very explicitly, the ramp in the index merely reflected the frenzied speculation in industrial metals by the Chinese and as authorities have cracked down on that idiocy, so the Baltic Dry has plunged by the most since November... as real demand punches back.

We continue to get more evidence that the U.S. economy has entered a major downturn. Just last week, I wrote about how U.S. GDP growth numbers have been declining for three quarters in a row, and previously I wrote about how corporate defaults have surged to their highest level since the last financial crisis. Well, now we are getting some very depressing numbers from the rail industry. As you will see below, U.S. rail traffic was down more than 11 percent from a year ago in April. That is an absolutely catastrophic number, and the U.S. rail industry is feeling...

292 Union Pacific engines idled in Arizona Desert Total US rail traffic in April plunged 11.8% from a year ago, the Association of American Railroads reported today. Carloads of bulk commodities such as coal, oil, grains, and chemicals plummeted 16.1% to 944,339 units. - snip - Only five of the 20 commodity categories saw gains. Of the decliners, coal was the biggest. But petroleum products also plunged 25%, and grain mill products dropped 7%. Even without coal, carloads were down 3% year-over-year.

Seldom have we seen so many assets and indicators at decision points simultaneously! We see stocks, gold, and the U.S. dollar trading at extremely important levels, all in conjunction. Note that this is not according to technical analysis, but our intermarket analysis and chart patterns.First, as indicated in recent analysis, risk indicators in U.S. stocks have turned positive in recent weeks. That suggest a bullish outcome for stocks, almost exactly at their breakout level. We prefer to let the market do its work, and so far we have not seen a breakout. But there are sufficient signs that it is in the making. As stocks are testing key resistance, the U.S. dollar...

Despite declines in labor force participation, family income and home ownership juxtaposed to increases in poverty, debt, and health care costs, President Obama maintains that his Administration "probably managed the American economy better than any large economy on Earth in human history." The President lambasted critics who cite GDP statistics that show Obama to be the only president that has failed to deliver even a single year of 3% growth—making his the worst performing administration since Herbert Hoover's during the early years of the Great Depression. "Growth and prosperity aren't the only metrics by which we should judge what has...

After crawling ahead at just a 0.5% annual pace in the first quarter, the slowest in two years, the American economy is due for a bounce — but how high? The jury is out whether the economy has simply hit another speed bump or is facing a more fundamental slowdown, but some details in Thursday’s Commerce Department report point to the latter. U.S. GDP also fizzled at the start of 2014 and 2015, shrinking 0.9% in the former and edging up 0.6% last year... Yet it’s iffy whether the economy can rebound to the same extent... On the plus side,...

A government's arsenal for moderating business cycles consists of fiscal and monetary policy. But the U.S. has little scope for using either if a new recession should now emerge. The Fed has only limited options left for stimulating the economy. And political gridlock may prevent any timely injection of fiscal stimulus. How big are the risks we face, and are we really out of options? Fortunately, continued expansion is the central forecast for the U.S. economy today. Janet Yellen's public assessments of the outlook are screened less for signs that the economy may need renewed policy easing and more for...

Investors are nervously awaiting the start of the first-quarter earnings season today when Alcoa (AA) reports after the close. Stocks and the economy are looking vulnerable, and hopes for corporate profits are not high. The first three months of the year look likely to be the worst quarter for earnings since 2009, with a 10.1 percent drop in S&P 500 profits expected, down from the 0.7 percent growth that was expected for the quarter back in December. The early optimism has since faded, driven largely by declines in energy sector estimates. Analysts are now bracing for the fourth consecutive quarter...