The global growth expectations computed from the German ZEW survey continue to deteriorate. Investors are aware that global growth has slowed, and after the vicious sell-off in equity prices in the fourth quarter of 2018, they…
Highlights Global Growth: Early leading indicators (credit impulses, our global LEI diffusion index) are signaling that the worst of the global economic downturn should soon end. Okun’s Law: In the developed economies, the…
This stunningly poor retail sales number is obviously worrisome, especially as the control group, which enters in the calculation of GDP, fell sharply as well. This catastrophic dataset, along with a poor industrial production…
India inherited liberal democracy and rule of law from the British. Its own revolutionary leaders built on this foundation, providing relative stability despite its patchwork of languages, ethnicities, and castes. Democratic…
The first concern is the unemployment rate. Even the official unemployment rate is rising despite the fast clip of economic growth and the pro-growth reforms. A leaked government statistical report suggests that unemployment has…
Highlights Uncertainty & Growth: There is currently a strong link between depressed global growth expectations and elevated levels of economic policy uncertainty (U.S.-China trade tensions, Brexit, etc). Monetary Policy: A growing…
Today, the U.S. private-sector financial balance – the difference between what the private sector earns and spends – stands at a healthy surplus of 2.1% of GDP. Both of the last two recessions began when the private-…
The recent U.S. data has certainly been consistent with that thesis. The ISM manufacturing index rose 2.3 percentage points to 56.6 in January. New orders jumped by 6.9 percentage points to 58.2. Payroll growth has also…
Highlights Hyman Minsky famously said that “stability begets instability.” The converse is also true: Instability begets stability. None of the preconditions for a U.S. recession are in place yet. The Fed’s decision…
Both central banks cited similar risks to justify their increasingly cautious outlook, such as financial market instability related to geopolitical uncertainty. Importantly, neither the Fed nor the ECB expressed conviction that…