Latest Articles

Downgrade

Jeffrey Speakes Downgrade On Friday, August 5 after the market close, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) announced a downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt from AAA to AA+. This announcement followed Congressional approval of a debt limit […]

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The July Jobs Report

Michael Puente and Dan Hamilton The BLS’s July Employment Situation was released today. Non-farm jobs grew by 117,000, highly focused on healthcare, (31,000), retail, (26,000), manufacturing, (24,000), and mining (9,000). Despite the increase in jobs, […]

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The GDP Revision Chart

Continuing my commentary on last Friday’s GDP release, here is a chart showing the revisions to real GDP growth. It might seem like some quarters are up and some are down, in effect a wash. […]

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The 2011 Q2 GDP Report

As we and other analysts have already mentioned, the GDP report released Friday indicates that growth was slower than we thought and inflation was higher than we thought during the 2007 to 2010 period. 2011 […]

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A Dismal GDP Report

The United States GDP data release this morning was dismal. The overall conclusions from this report are that: • Economic growth was weaker than we thought during 2007 to 2010 • Inflation was higher than […]

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Today's Data Release Changes Everything

Until today, we’ve been confident that we could avoid a double-dip recession.  Too be sure, we’ve acknowledged that risks abound, particularly in the Middle East and in the Eurozone.  However, the recovery seemed to be […]

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The June United State Jobs Report

The BLS’s Employment Situation report for June was released today. Non-farm jobs and the unemployment rate both grew slightly. Jobs grew by 18,000, which on a base of 131 million jobs, is essentially the same […]

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Bank Charge Offs

It was big news when bank charge offs exceeded $40 billion in 2008’s fourth quarter.  It was the first time in history that wrote off more than $40 billion in uncollectable loans.  Since then, you’ve […]

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The May United States Jobs Report

The United States Employment Situation was released this morning and the glimmer of hope that I had been nurturing as the February, March, and April data came out has been weakened. While the May public […]

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The May Jobs Forecast

This is a short note about our forecast of the May labor market. We are still bearish on the overall economy with the usual suspects: banking, real estate, and the labor market weighing against vigorous […]

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The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Economy

For about six quarters we have watched various measures of strong United States economic performance: Corporate profits have been very strong. The Dow has almost doubled since the early 2009 bottom of about 6,600. Productivity […]

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Sooner Would be Better

We’ve been saying for a long time that the Eurozone has to break up.  There is no reason Greece and Germany should have the same monetary policy, never has been.  We’re glad to see other […]

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