Monthly Archives: July 2011

I’ve often pondered the length of this cyclical upswing (2009-) relative to the previous (2003-2007).  Here’s what the S&P 500 performance for the two periods compared side-by-side looks like: If this cycle will not last longer than the previous, then … Continue reading →

Links and pictures presented with minimal commentary. From the FRED paper entitled “The Federal Debt: What’s the Source of the Increase in Spending?”: Defence & other expenditures vs Social Security/Medicade/Other personal payments: Further broken down: Phenomenal work by the Bipartisan … Continue reading →

Whilst the epic debate on the debt ceiling is waged, I thought it was relevant to take a look at the budget balance historically juxtaposed against personal income tax revenues. Here is a graph comparing Personal Current Taxes as a … Continue reading →

Despite the hard miss non-farm payrolls have, we still have a number of reasons to be optimistic about the job market: Bottom line: according to the establishment BLS survey (390k employers surveyed), we’re up 1.17 million jobs – almost 100k/mo … Continue reading →

We’ve made no secret about our position on the US labour market.  The internals have looked promising for some time.  Now, after this morning’s ADP report, analysts are scrambling to revise their estimates.  Even still, the median estimate is 105k … Continue reading →

The ISM Manufacturing Survey is probably the most important non-governmental economic data release. The ISM PMI enjoys a reasonably strong relationship with GDP.  A simple linear model demonstrates a leading relationship between the two series: The model implies annual GDP … Continue reading →