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Tag Archives: economic contraction
Say Goodbye to Normal
Say Goodbye to Normal The tremors rattling markets are not exactly what they seem to be. A meme prevails that these movements represent a kind of financial peristalsis — regular wavelike workings of eternal progress toward an epic more of everything, especially profits! You can forget the supposedly “normal” cycles of the techno-industrial arrangement, which means, in […]
Is The Oil Crash A Result Of Excess Supply Or Plunging Demand: The Unpleasant Answer In One Chart
Is The Oil Crash A Result Of Excess Supply Or Plunging Demand: The Unpleasant Answer In One Chart One of the most vocal discussions in the past year has been whether the collapse, subsequent rebound, and recent relapse in the price of oil is due to surging supply as Saudi Arabia pumps out month after […]
Recession, Not Fracking, Behind Drop in U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Scientists Conclude
Recession, Not Fracking, Behind Drop in U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Scientists Conclude It’s been a talking point for boosters of the shale gas rush for years: as fracking spread across the country and the supply glut drove prices down, utilities have been shuttering dirty coal plants and burning natural gas instead – meaning that America’s […]
Major Chain Stores Shutting Down as America Faces “Birth Pangs of Retail Apocalypse”
Major Chain Stores Shutting Down as America Faces “Birth Pangs of Retail Apocalypse” Reduced consumer spending is heralding a looming economic downturn, if not collapse, with an unprecedented shutdown of major box stores, restaurants and grocers underway. It doesn’t bode well for the millions of Americans who are already seriously struggling, and will only accelerate […]
Canada’s economy isn’t in recession, despite report, Joe Oliver says
Canada’s economy isn’t in recession, despite report, Joe Oliver says Private sector economists warn of possibility of recession this year Despite an economy that’s shrunk every month for which we have data this year, the federal finance minister says Canada is not in a recession and is poised for growth later in 2015. At an event […]
A Recession Within A Recession
A Recession Within A Recession On Friday, the federal government announced that the U.S. economy contracted at a 0.7 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2015. This unexpected shrinking of the economy is being primarily blamed on “harsh” weather during the first three months of this year and on the strengthening of the […]
China Momentum Indicator Plunges to “Hard Landing” Level
China Momentum Indicator Plunges to “Hard Landing” Level “But nothing is normal in China anymore.” Hard-landing gurus have been predicting an imminent end of the China bubble for years. A “hard landing” would be the optimistic scenario. The other scenario would be a crash-and-burn. But to their greatest frustration, there was no hard landing, or […]
US Economy Collapses Again
US Economy Collapses Again 4th Time in 4 years Data released last week by the U.S. government showed the U.S. economy came to a near halt in the first three months of 2015, falling to nearly zero – i.e. a mere 0.2 percent annual growth rate for the January-March quarter. The collapse was the fourth […]
China Containerized Freight Index Plunges to Multi-Year Low, Shanghai-EU Rates Totally Collapse, US Rates Morose
China Containerized Freight Index Plunges to Multi-Year Low, Shanghai-EU Rates Totally Collapse, US Rates Morose If trade is a reflection of global demand, and if shipping rates are a reflection of the supply of ships by carriers and the demand for those ships by exporters to meet that global demand for goods – well then, we’ve […]
Sucking Spoilt Milk From A Bloated Dead Sow
Sucking Spoilt Milk From A Bloated Dead Sow With US GDP growth ‘officially’ back where it belongs, in the Arctic zone close to freezing on the surface but much worse in real life, for reasons both Albert Edwards and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (not exactly a pair of Siamese twins) remarked this week; that is, excluding the […]
Major U.S. Retailers Are Closing More Than 6,000 Stores
Major U.S. Retailers Are Closing More Than 6,000 Stores If the U.S. economy really is improving, then why are big U.S. retailers permanently shutting down thousands of stores? The “retail apocalypse” that I have written about so frequently appears to be accelerating. As you will see below, major U.S. retailers have announced that they are […]
The Dwindling US Economy
The Dwindling US Economy The announcement today (April 29) of a barely positive GDP first quarter 2015 growth rate of 0.2 percent (two-tenths of one percent) is an intentional exaggeration. Today’s GDP report is the “advance estimate.” There will be two revisions, with the first occurring in one month on May 29. Although the “consensus […]
Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy?
Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy? If enough people truly believe that things will get better, will that actually cause them to get better? There is certainly something to be said for being positive and thinking that anything is possible. And as Americans, optimism seems to come naturally for us. However, […]
A Field Guide to Negative Progress
A Field Guide to Negative Progress I’ve commented before in these posts that writing is always partly a social activity. What Mortimer Adler used to call the Great Conversation, the dance of ideas down the corridors of the centuries, shapes every word in a writer’s toolkit; you can hardly write a page in English without […]
