My favorite cartoonist, Omid Malekan, explains gas prices:
David Stockman interview: How to drive down oil prices. Great stuff. Robert Reich is almost hilarious—blah, blah, blah.
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My recent post on oil/gasoline prices not causing recessions went over badly. I don’t think anyone really agreed with me. Most economists are still wedded to the concept that consumer spending is everything and if consumers spend less on consumer goods and more on gasoline, the economy, depending on how high prices are, will go [...] In a season in which the media reported that the average cost of a Thanksgiving dinner rose 13%, how impressive is it that retail sales may have risen by half that amount in the weekend just ended? If you remember to keep adjusting comparative data for almost 1% population growth yearly, and apply a realistic [...] Today is the Producer Price Index report release and tomorrow it will be the Consumer Price Index report. The PPI for September made a dramatic 0.8% MoM increase. On an annual basis prices rose 7.0%. If you strip out food and energy, the so-called Core price inflation, the Index rose 0.2% MoM and 2.5% YoY. [...] Inflationistas are probably confounded by Friday’s Consumer Price Index report that showed a decline of 0.2% in June. The report pins the decline, the first since June 2010, on falling energy costs. As a large component of CPI it: declined 4.4 percent in June, the largest decline since December 2008. The gasoline index, which fell [...] Aside from the theme propounded on this site that the “Great Recession” never really ended, if we use mainstream terminology, then the recession ended two years ago. It may just be that another one has already begun. Here are some exhibits: 1. “Real PCE decreased 0.1 percent, the same decrease as in April.” (PCE is [...] As I write this at 2:10 PM Eastern time, yesterday’s “turnaround Tuesday” rally has been reversed. We are finally seeing the beginnings of capitulation in stock traders, as the volatility index with the symbol VIX finally break above 20. Last year, it surged above 45, and I use 25 and above as a rule of thumb of [...] The effects of money-printing to sustain a floundering economic-political diet of candy without much bitters continue to work their way through the world’s markets. The markets may have finally moved away from a “risk-on” or “risk-off” no-thinking required structure. After all, with seemingly endless money flows emanating from the central bank, each day is Valentine’s [...] |
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