{"id":16527,"date":"2016-01-16T10:08:48","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T15:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16527"},"modified":"2016-01-16T21:20:31","modified_gmt":"2016-01-17T02:20:31","slug":"us-economy-slip-sliding-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16527","title":{"rendered":"US Economy \u2013 Slip-Sliding Away"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US Economy \u2013 Slip-Sliding Away\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Economic Conditions Continue to Worsen<\/strong><\/div>\n
\n

It must be China. Or the weather, which is usually either too cold or to warm \u2013 somehow the weather is just\u00a0never<\/em>right for economic growth. Surely it cannot be another Fed policy-induced boom that is on the verge of going bust? Sorry, we completely forgot \u2013 the Fed is never at fault when the economy suffers a boom-bust cycle. That only happens because we have \u201ctoo few regulations\u201d (that\u2019s what Mr. Bernanke said after the 2008 bust \u2013 no kidding).<\/p>\n

\"forgotten-heritage\"<\/p>\n

Photo credit:\u00a0Matthew Emmett<\/a><\/p>\n

No matter what economic data releases one looks at lately, one seems more horrendous than the next. This is apart from payrolls of course, which are not only a lagging indicator, but are apparently a number that is occasionally made up out of whole cloth \u2013 such as in December, when 281,000 of the reported 292,000 in non-farm payroll gains were\u00a0the result of \u201cseasonal adjustment\u201d<\/a>, which is bureaucrat-speak for \u201cdidn\u2019t actually happen\u201d.<\/p>\n

Today the markets were inundated with data that strongly suggest that the negative trends observed over much of 2015 continue to accelerate. In what is by now a well-worn tradition, Fed district surveys of the manufacturing sector continued their decline with today\u2019s release of the Empire State survey. One no longer risks being accused of hyperbole by calling its recent trend a \u201ccollapse\u201d:<\/p>\n

\"1-Empire<\/a>Empire State Survey, general business conditions index. Such readings are usually not seen during economic expansions \u2013 click to enlarge.<\/p>\n

As is often the case, not a single economist came even remotely close to correctly forecasting this meltdown. As\u00a0Mish noted earlier<\/a>\u00a0today, it was quite a big miss:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0Econoday Consensus<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0estimate was for a slight improvement to -4 from a November reading of -4.59. The actual result was -19.37 with the lowest economic estimate -7.50.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Economy \u2013 Slip-Sliding Away\u00a0 Economic Conditions Continue to Worsen It must be China. Or the weather, which is usually either too cold or to warm \u2013 somehow the weather is just\u00a0neverright for economic growth. Surely it cannot be another Fed policy-induced boom that is on the verge of going bust? Sorry, we completely forgot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5728,130,11743,303,305,6170,5845,827,841,1219],"class_list":["post-16527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-acting-man","tag-china","tag-empire-state-survey","tag-fed","tag-federal-reserve","tag-pater-tenebrarum","tag-seasonal-adjustment","tag-united-states","tag-us-economy","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16528,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16527\/revisions\/16528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}