Tag Archives: Retail sales

There is a lot of evidence which shows some basis for expectations-based monetary policy. Much of what becomes a recession or worse is due to the psychological impacts upon businesses (who invest and hire) as well as workers being consumers (who earn and then spend). Once the snowball of macro contraction begins rolling downhill, rational prudence dictates some degree of caution on all parts (pro-cyclicality). Bathed in the unearned glow of the Great “Moderation”,...

Before there could be “globally synchronized growth”, it had been plain old “global growth.” The former from 2017 appended the term “synchronized” to its latter 2014 forerunner in order to jazz it up. And it needed the additional rhetorical flourish due to the simple fact that in 2015 for all the stated promise of “global growth” it ended up meaning next to nothing in reality. Oddly the same for 2017’s update heading into 2018 and 2019. If currency wars are the...

A big splurge in September, and then not much more in October. While it would be consistent for many to focus on the former, instead there is much about the latter which, for once, is feeding growing concerns. Retail sales, American consumer spending on goods, has been the one (outside of economically insignificant housing) bright spot since summer. If it succumbs to the slowdown every other economic account is displaying, that could only mean it really has been...

It was a shock, total disbelief given how everyone, and I mean everyone, had penciled China in as the world’s go-to growth engine. If the global economy was ever going to get off the ground again following GFC1 more than a half a decade before, the Chinese had to get back to their precrisis “normal.” In 2014, the clock was ticking but expectations were extremely high nonetheless. In September 2014, however, massive setback. Though it had been building all year by...

It does seem, at first, a huge contradiction. On the one hand, what we know so far of China’s 14th 5-year plan apparently will lean heavily on new technologies not-yet invented to rescue the country’s economy from the pit of de-globalization the eurodollar system had thrown it into years ago. If the global economy isn’t going to recover, and there’s absolutely no sign that it will, then the one seemingly logical (though far-fetched) way forward would be if the...

One day short of one year ago, on September 16, 2019, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported its updated monthly estimates for the Big 3 accounts. Industrial Production (IP) is a closely-watched indicator as it is relatively decent proxy for the entire goods economy around the world. Retail Sales in the post-Euro$ #2 context give us a sense of the Chinese economy’s persistent struggle to try to “rebalance” without the pre-2008 boost China had obtained...

After the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Tokyo with tales seemingly spun from some sci-fi disaster movie, all eyes turned to Japan. Cruisers had boarded the vacation vessel in Yokohama on January 20 already knowing that there was something bad going on in China’s Wuhan. The big ship would head out anyway for a fourteen-day tour of Vietnam, Taiwan, and, yes, China. Three days in, news reached the Diamond that the Communists had closed down the affected region....

These numbers do seem epic, don’t they? It’s hard to ignore when you have the greatest percentage increase in the history of a major economic account. Just writing that sentence it’s difficult to deny the power of those words. Which is precisely the point: we already know ahead of time how the biggest economic holes in history are going to produce the biggest positives coming out of them. Whether that constitutes an actual recovery as opposed to the simplistic and...

Here they are again, seemingly at odds over how to proceed. Reminiscent of prior battles over whether to revive the economy or just let it go where it will, it appears as if China is in for Xi vs. Li Round 2. Or is it all just clever politics? Li Keqiang may be nominally the Chinese Premier but he’s a very distant second on every list of power players. Xi Jinping holds all the top spots, including a 2017-18 consolidation of power that left Xi rivaling only Mao in...

Is it over? That’s the question everyone is asking about both major crises, the answer is more obvious for only the one. As it pertains to the pandemic, no, it is not. Still the early stages. The other crisis, the global dollar run? Not looking like it, either. Stocks rebounded because of “major helicopter stimulus” or because that’s just what stocks do during times like these. Some of the biggest up days have followed, and are often found in between, the greatest...