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United States’ May Retail Sales were $362.5 billion, down 1.2 percent from April. The decline was broad based. Motor vehicles, building materials, gasoline, clothing, and general merchandise all fell significantly. Furniture/home furnishings, electronics/appliances, food, health/personal, and sporting goods/hobby were up but just a bit. Building material purchases dove 9.3 percent following an 8.4 percent . . . → Read More: United States Retail Sales The net wealth of United States households and non-profit institutions rose a bit in the first quarter of 2010, the Federal Reserve reported today. This data release shows that net wealth (assets minus liabilities) increased by about a trillion dollars, from $53.5 trillion to $54.5 trillion. From an asset-class point of view this gain . . . → Read More: United States Wealth The May labor market data are mostly disappointing, with 411 of the 431 thousand job gains due to temporary Census 2010 staff increases. The raw data indicate that April SAAR job growth was 2.7 percent and May was 4 percent. If we remove the temporary Census workers from the data, then the revised SAAR . . . → Read More: The May Employment Situation How are banks doing? We discuss a few measures. We closed 16 banks in May so far, with 73 so far this year according to the FDIC. There were only 36 bank failures through May of 2009. While there were 140 bank failures in 2009, we are on track (based on a simple extrapolation . . . → Read More: Banks Recent data releases show that Core inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index, excluding food and energy, has been falling rapidly for 4 months now. This is despite recently strong real consumption growth and despite the overall Consumer Price Index holding steady, see chart nearby. Usually, at least in the past ten years, . . . → Read More: Deflation? |
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