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solarbirdGood morning, Cascadia. Typing has been particularly problematic lately, so you haven't seen much from me as of late. This is mostly entered with voice-to-text! So please forgive errors. Regardless...
Leading economic indicators in December were slightly up. Interest rates, building permits, and jobs led the index. Sadly, the market appears to have entered at least a correction phase, as major indices have moved sharply downward. (Dr. Roubini of RGE Monitor thinks this entire rally is ending soon) Also, jobless claims unexpectedly jumped last week. And while the rise in building permits was meaningful, much of it was a dead cat bounce from the housing bottom - and not much of a bounce at that. Housing starts, which is to say the actual beginning of construction of new homes, actually fell unexpectedly.
On jobs, Mish has a column on the use of the Census hiring plans as a quiet jobs creation's programme. He asks, "Pray tell why does it take 1.4 million Americans to conduct a census, 3 times as many as in 2000?"
Over a global economic trend analysis, Mish posted a short column on credit card charge-offs, and the expected decline in total revolving credit. Essentially, total outstanding revolving credit is expected to decline by more than half from peak. Mish discusses the implications for spending. He has other charts of interest here. Meanwhile, Canadian personal credit has increased 39% in 21 months. This has indications of a bubble. It certainly outpaces the losses in the economy. Says Jonathan:
The US dollar index has risen sharply over the last few days; due to my keyboard vacation, I'm not really sure why. However, dollar strength and the US stock market indices inverse relation appears to have returned.
One of my favourite indicators, the M1 money multiplier, has continued to plumb new lows. This indicates that economic growth is not continuing to keep up with the increase in M1 money supply. This is to me a negative indicator, because it indicates that money borrowed is not producing adequate economic growth to sustain the borrowing made. We are, in fact, well below the lows reached in 2008 and most of 2009, during the peak of the recognised recession. (Static chart here.) Relatedly, while I'm not familiar with Nathan at Economic Edge, he does collect several similar charts from the Federal Reserve (mostly) in a rather long post here.
Most of this is behind a firewall, but you can read the headline, and that's the important part: Moody's has put US$572.7 billion worth of Alt-A residential mortgage-backed securities on watch. Karl at market sector also has an article on mass fraud via under-the-table payments and nondisclosure in bundled securities made up of secondary liens on housing. As always, he calls for prosecutions. If you're a regular reader of my journal, I'm sure you know what I think the odds are that might be. Meanwhile, I'm sure banks are grateful for the political distractions of the moment, as they prepared to hand out record bonuses fuelled primarily by taxpayer bailout.
The New York Times also has an op-ed on the other plots to wreck an America, as they put it, involving financial regulation or the lack thereof.
Other things to read: Karl's macro survey of the economy. If you somehow missed it, Google's letter to China. Marketwatch's angry letter to both parties.
Globally, retail sales are doing well in Australia. Factory prices are rising in Great Britain. Kyle Bass at The Business Insider has a rather worrysome column on Japan's monetary situation. Foreign Policy makes the classic "if this goes on" mistake regarding China. And Time Magazine Blames Canada (and Saudi Arabia, and China) in a pointless burst of blame-displacement and bullshittery. Really, they're talking about the giant floating money pool, but they're being stupid about it. And the Times of London discusses how Greece's economic crisis "may well become Germany's problem".
That's all for now. Good luck!
Leading economic indicators in December were slightly up. Interest rates, building permits, and jobs led the index. Sadly, the market appears to have entered at least a correction phase, as major indices have moved sharply downward. (Dr. Roubini of RGE Monitor thinks this entire rally is ending soon) Also, jobless claims unexpectedly jumped last week. And while the rise in building permits was meaningful, much of it was a dead cat bounce from the housing bottom - and not much of a bounce at that. Housing starts, which is to say the actual beginning of construction of new homes, actually fell unexpectedly.
On jobs, Mish has a column on the use of the Census hiring plans as a quiet jobs creation's programme. He asks, "Pray tell why does it take 1.4 million Americans to conduct a census, 3 times as many as in 2000?"
Over a global economic trend analysis, Mish posted a short column on credit card charge-offs, and the expected decline in total revolving credit. Essentially, total outstanding revolving credit is expected to decline by more than half from peak. Mish discusses the implications for spending. He has other charts of interest here. Meanwhile, Canadian personal credit has increased 39% in 21 months. This has indications of a bubble. It certainly outpaces the losses in the economy. Says Jonathan:
The $56 billion increase in outstanding personal lines of credit is the equivalent of a 4% increase in Canadian disposable income over the 21 month period. It has been a massive stimulus on the domestic economy...As yet, Canada has not experienced the housing bust, despite a hiccough in the growth curve earlier in 2009.
A housing bust would effectively stop this credit expansion and possibly shrink outstanding credit balances. When that happens, it will feel as though disposable income had just dropped by well over 13%. The result on the domestic economy and the circular effect of a credit deflation on house prices is predictable.
The US dollar index has risen sharply over the last few days; due to my keyboard vacation, I'm not really sure why. However, dollar strength and the US stock market indices inverse relation appears to have returned.
One of my favourite indicators, the M1 money multiplier, has continued to plumb new lows. This indicates that economic growth is not continuing to keep up with the increase in M1 money supply. This is to me a negative indicator, because it indicates that money borrowed is not producing adequate economic growth to sustain the borrowing made. We are, in fact, well below the lows reached in 2008 and most of 2009, during the peak of the recognised recession. (Static chart here.) Relatedly, while I'm not familiar with Nathan at Economic Edge, he does collect several similar charts from the Federal Reserve (mostly) in a rather long post here.
Most of this is behind a firewall, but you can read the headline, and that's the important part: Moody's has put US$572.7 billion worth of Alt-A residential mortgage-backed securities on watch. Karl at market sector also has an article on mass fraud via under-the-table payments and nondisclosure in bundled securities made up of secondary liens on housing. As always, he calls for prosecutions. If you're a regular reader of my journal, I'm sure you know what I think the odds are that might be. Meanwhile, I'm sure banks are grateful for the political distractions of the moment, as they prepared to hand out record bonuses fuelled primarily by taxpayer bailout.
The New York Times also has an op-ed on the other plots to wreck an America, as they put it, involving financial regulation or the lack thereof.
Other things to read: Karl's macro survey of the economy. If you somehow missed it, Google's letter to China. Marketwatch's angry letter to both parties.
Globally, retail sales are doing well in Australia. Factory prices are rising in Great Britain. Kyle Bass at The Business Insider has a rather worrysome column on Japan's monetary situation. Foreign Policy makes the classic "if this goes on" mistake regarding China. And Time Magazine Blames Canada (and Saudi Arabia, and China) in a pointless burst of blame-displacement and bullshittery. Really, they're talking about the giant floating money pool, but they're being stupid about it. And the Times of London discusses how Greece's economic crisis "may well become Germany's problem".
That's all for now. Good luck!
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 06:09 pm (UTC)As always, cheers for the mash-up!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 07:56 pm (UTC)In 2000 it was thought that too many people were missed. (Don't get me started on the people they don't count, like prisoners.) So they decided to employ more people in the hopes of getting a more accurate count.
I wish them luck with that.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 10:59 pm (UTC)a) The Census Bureau during the entire Bush II administration was severely underfunded and undermanned, to the point that on occasion they'd have to postpone ongoing survey projects because they literally did not have the funding to do so.
(For those unaware--the ONLY Federal government agency that gets less funding than the Census Bureau is the National Endowment for the Arts--the Census Bureau, till recently, operated on a budget of around $25 million per year.)
And yes, I DO feel safe in putting the blame on Shrub. I knew many women and men who worked in my department who'd been hired on during the Clinton years (if not earlier) and all of them to a one stated the agency had been funded much better even in between-decennial-census periods (with fewer ongoing "inter-decennial" surveys) than it was under the Dubya era.
b) The Census Bureau had to rely on essentially government temps ("Career conditional" employees, all of the headache of being a federal employee and none of the benefits packages--this is in the category I was in, by the way) because they did not have the funding to hire on career-conditional employees on even part-time (because benefits packages would be too expensive).
And yes, I tried getting on, and yes, this is what I was quite officially told by HR at the Census Bureau processing center where I worked--they pretty much only got funding to hire career-conditional employees, not anyone who would be hired as a "benefits" employee.
c) The Census Bureau conducts a LOT of ongoing surveys other than the decennial census. In fact, a big part of the Census Bureau's work since about 2001 or so has been with a direct "spinoff" of the decennial census--the old "long form" (which was sent off to about one in every five households) was discontinued and has been replaced with a separate Census Bureau survey called the American Community Survey (still sent to roughly one out of every five households in the US, but conducted yearly, and the primary source of demographic info for things like determining tax bases and prioritising public works projects).
In addition to the decennial census and the ACS, there are a lot of more focused surveys the Census Bureau conducts as an ongoing project (such as specific business surveys, consumer surveys, and so on)--the business surveys, the decennial census, and the ACS are the big three that are legally mandatory to fill out, but all of them are used very much in public planning.
d) A fair amount of this hiring isn't going to be for just the folks going door-to-door for the decennial census--a LOT of the hiring is at processing centers (coding in data, followups with forms that didn't scan in correctly, mapping, research, and so on--yes, the Census Bureau has, quite literally, an entire division of people whose day jobs consist of looking up addresses and contact info on Google and other search engines all day long, among other things).
So, for the Cliff's Notes version--a lot of this hiring isn't just for the 2010 decennial census, but hiring/funding/etc. for other surveys that has been put off for the better part of eight or more years.
(As an aside--for those with confidentiality concerns re the ACS--you can fill this out anonymously. (We were even told we couldn't provide info on specific parties who filled out the survey even to the Department of Homeland Security, but I do have it on Word Of Census Bureau that it's ok to fill it out anonymously--all they care about is compiling it into averages. Yes, we did have people who occasionally refused to fill out Census forms due to confidentiality concerns, hence why I know this and can safely state this.)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 11:12 pm (UTC)I'm not real happy with Obama or the Congress right now, (and that goes for both parties,) but it is an improvement. (Not that that's saying much.) The whole system is so corrupt and rotten to the core.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 12:31 am (UTC)And yeah, things are rotten to the core, they've improved a tiny bit but need much more work. (Then again, pretty much anyone in a position to do anything has to be feeling a hell of a lot like the Poopsmith in Homestar Runner :P)