ConvergEx's Nicholas Colas asks "Can the US economy get back to the 3% GDP growth it enjoyed in the 1980s – mid 2000s?"
White House economic policy makers say “Yes”.
Most professional economists say “No”.
History says, “Worker productivity drives economic growth, not politicians or economists. Fix productivity and you can get to 3%.”
History may not be laconic, but it has a point.
A long, long time ago, back in 2008 when most of today's hedge fund analysts were still stressing over what to wear to prom, a man named Bernard Madoff was arrested for bilking unsuspecting investors out of $65 billion. Madoff ran what is traditionally referred to as a ponzi scheme in which new investments were solicited as a means to fund massive redemptions that otherwise would have resulted in a collapse of his fund long before the FBI finally caught up with his scheme.
But, Madoff was eventually caught and in 2009 he was sentenced to 150 years in prison for his scheme.
With 'soft' data broadly tumbling to catch down to 'hard' data's demise, today's Philly Fed exuberance stands out like badly-adjusted sore thumb. Beating expectations by 6 standard deviations (38.8 vs 18.5 exp),
the breakdown shows employment dropped, new orders dropped, prices paid dropped, but shipments surged.
Looking at the full breakdown of the Philly sentiment print, most of the component and especially future indicators fell. For example, the 6m outlook fell to 34.8 from 45.4 previously...
Carmakers quickly kowtowed to Trump after his upset victory over Hilary Clinton on Nov. 8, allowing the then-president-elect to take credit for their pledges to hire thousands of workers and keep U.S. factories open.
Authored by Ted Bauman via BanyanHill.com,
How do I despise thee, O Congress? Let me count the ways.
Don’t take my word for it: 75% of Americans disapprove of the job our representatives are doing. It’s things like this that explain why:
Whilst only about 13% of U.S. employees nationwide enjoy a retirement fund that assures stable, lifelong income, all 535 members of Congress do … courtesy of Uncle Sam.