Business

While many "conventional" indicators of US economic vibrancy and strength have lost their informational and predictive value over the past decade (GDP fluctuates erratically especially in Q1, employment is the lowest this century yet real wage growth is non-existent, inflation remains under the Fed's target despite its $4.5 trillion balance sheet and so on), one indicator has remained a stubbornly fail-safe marker of economic contraction: since the 1960, every time Commercial & Industrial loan balances have declined (or simply stopped growing), whether due to tighter loan supply or decl

Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,

Let me begin with a caveat: confirmation bias is an ever-present risk for an analyst such as myself.

If you're not familiar with the term, 'confirmation bias' suggests that once we've invested time and emotional energy into developing a worldview, we'll then seek information to confirm that view.   

Authored by EconomicPrism's MN Gordon via Acting-Man.com,

Mass Infusions of New Credit

“The bank is something more than men, I tell you.  It’s the monster.  Men made it, but they can’t control it.” – John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Yesterday's dramatic "rotational" divergence between tech stocks and the rest of the market, which as Sentiment Trader pointed out the only time in history when the Dow Jones closed at a new all time high while the Nasdaq dropped 2% was on April 14, 1999, stunned many and prompted Bloomberg to write that "a crack has finally formed in the foundation of the U.S. bull market. Now investors must decide if any structural damage has been done."

As if things weren't bad enough for America's mall owners, what with the having to filling their retail space with high schools, grocers and churches, it seems that retailers have grown so uncertain about the future of these 1980s relics that they're only willing to sign 1-2 leases these days.

As Bloomberg points out this morning, leases renewals used to be 5-10 years in length but are increasingly only being signed with 1-2 year terms.  Meanwhile, thousands of stores are closing each year and it's only expected to get worse over time.