Economy | The Daily Capitalist

Brief Economic and Market Update

I was so busy yesterday, I didn’t get a chance to report that having put funds into the long Japanese yen trade just two days earlier with FXY, I closed the trade out with the tiniest of profits when the U.S. stock market continued to look unstoppable for the nonce, and the correlation between U.S. [...]

Sulking In America

This article originally appeared in my regular column in a local newspaper. — JH

I’ve been sulking ever since the elections. Just about everything and everyone I voted for lost. Locally the opposition Republicans ran mostly bad candidates and lost everywhere. But so did the Democrats and they won. For the record I [...]

Demographic Changes and Surprise Weakening in Corporate Profits Might Support Even Higher Prices for Treasury Bonds

In an historical rarity, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 Index are both below where they were five years ago. In contrast, the price of gold and the price of Treasury bonds have each soared. The combination of gold rising along with silver and many other commodities while at the same time [...]

Q3 GDP Revised Down—Again

I have written several articles on the GDP revisions, and now the “final” revision for Q3 comes, knocking it down to 1.8% from 2.0%. Recall that we started at 2.5%. The difference was mainly a downward revision in consumer spending on services (to 1.9% from 2.9%).

Here is what it looks like:

As I [...]

Bernanke Implies More Market Pain Before QE3

Ben Bernanke spoke today before Congress; click HERE for his prepared remarks. The markets appear to have seized on the paragraph about potential further easing of monetary conditions. They appear to be ignoring that the text spends one paragraph on easing but two paragraphs on potential tightening. Earlier in the text, he reiterates the Fed’s [...]

Worsening Wealth Disparities Reflect Downside of Excessive Money Creation

Recently, Jeff Harding described The Bifurcated Economy. There is some additional information out regarding this phenomenon, courtesy of Rasmussen Reports, commissioned by Discover Financial. The report is titled Discover® U.S. Spending MonitorSM Consumer Confidence Remains Flat in May. The subtitle describes the findings:

Majority of Consumers Planning Less Discretionary Spending; High Gas Prices, Unemployment Pressuring [...]