Two years ago this month I was in Madrid reporting a story on the troubles of the Spanish economy and what they meant for Europe and its debt crisis. And here I am today writing about the troubles of the Spanish economy and what they mean for Europe and its debt crisis. I usually don’t like to repeat myself, but the fact that I am anyway shows just how badly Europe’s strategy for resolving its debt crisis is failing.
The lackluster U.S. economic recovery has fueled an unusually public argument between two of the most prominent economists in the country: Nobel prize-winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has accused Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke of not doing enough to help spur the economy. Bernanke has responded by pointing out that the Fed has already acted [...]
As China’s high-octane economy shifts into lower gear, virtually everyone agrees that the double-digit, super-charged boom years are drawing to a close.
The U.S. unemployment rate has fallen from 9% to about 8% in the last year, to the delight of everyone from job seekers to the Obama re-election team. But traditional economic theory tells us that shouldn’t have happened unless the economy was growing by double its current 2.5% rate.
The bad news just keeps coming. The U.S. economy grew even less than expected in the second quarter, at a rate of 1.3%, down from what many economists predicted would be 1.8% or higher. The reasons for the continued lackluster performance haven’t changed. Consumers, squeezed by higher gas and other prices, are buying less of [...]
There’s a lot of finger wagging going on in the world about America’s profligate ways. And a lot of comparisons between the budget troubles of the U.S. and the horrors facing Greece. The West, the story goes, stupidly spent beyond its means while emerging markets wisely saved their pennies for rainy days like these. But [...]
This morning the Commerce Department released revised figures for fourth quarter GDP. There was good news: economic output increased at a 5.9% seasonally adjusted annualized pace, up from an earlier measure of 5.7%, showing that the economy is buzzing along even faster than we thought. Stock futures promptly dropped. Wait. What?
The Bureau of Economic Analysis has just released its third try at estimating third-quarter GDP. It’s now been ratcheted down to 2.2%—from 2.8% in the estimate released a month ago and 3.5% in the original estimate. The culprit: downward revisions to nonresidential fixed investment, to private inventory investment, and to personal consumption expenditures. It just [...]
Barbara can have her upbeat housing statistics. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis delivered a downer today, revising its estimate of third-quarter GDP growth from 3.5% to 2.8%. The revision was primarily due, the BEA said, to an upward revision to imports and downward revisions to personal consumption expenditures and to nonresidential fixed investment [...]
What can we learn from this morning’s surprisingly strong 3.5% real GDP growth report? 1) Goldman Sachs does not know all. The bank’s economists had been on eerie run of sending out prescient alerts the day before major data releases—mainly the monthly employment numbers—that described in detail how the consensus was going to be wrong [...]
