Category: Economy

 Back in November we chronicled the (quiet) death of the Petrodollar, the system that has buttressed USD hegemony for decades by ensuring that oil producers recycled their dollar proceeds into still more USD assets creating a very convenient (if your printing press mints dollars) self-fulfilling prophecy that has effectively underwritten the dollar’s reserve status in the post WWII era. Here’s what we said last year: Two years ago, in hushed tones at first, then ever louder, the financial world began discussing that which shall never be discussed in polite company – the end of the system that according to many has framed and facilitated the US Dollar’s reserve currency status: the Petrodollar, or the world in which oil export countries would recycle the dollars they received in exchange for their oil exports, by purchasing more USD-denominated assets, boosting the financial strength of the reserve currency, leading to even higher […]

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A Ford Truck assembly line in Dearborn, Mich., in November. ENLARGE Photo: Getty Images Based on the jobs data alone , the American economy is doing fabulously. Monthly payroll growth this year, averaging 267,000, already is ahead of last year’s impressive tally, which in turn handily beat the prior year. The unemployment rate, at 5.5%, is now in the range some economists consider “full employment.” But overall economic growth has been less impressive. That’s because productivity—the amount of goods and services each worker produces—is growing at a tepid rate. Since the economic expansion began in 2009, annual productivity growth has averaged just 1.3%, if the farm and government sectors are excluded. That is the weakest growth of any expansion since the 1970s. On Thursday, the day before the encouraging February jobs data were released, the Labor Department reported that productivity in last year’s fourth quarter didn’t grow at all […]

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The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building stands at sunrise in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014. The Federal Open Market Committee meets today and tomorrow after six weeks of volatility in global financial markets. Since the FOMC met in mid-September, oil prices have tumbled 14 percent, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of stocks dropped as much as 7.4 percent from a record close. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg The dollar soared and bond yields spiked as hiring by US employers smashed Wall Street expectations and sparked heightened speculation that the Federal Reserve is nearing its first interest-rate rise in nearly a decade. Employers added 295,000 jobs in February in defiance of bad weather and the unemployment rate fell to 5.5 per cent, the lowest level since 2008. The US has now seen its longest streak of monthly jobs gains above the 200,000 mark in 20 years. […]

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New orders for U.S. factory goods unexpectedly fell in January, posting their sixth straight monthly decline, a sign of weakness in the manufacturing sector. The Commerce Department said on Thursday new orders for manufactured goods slipped 0.2 percent after a revised 3.5 percent decline in December. Economists polled by Reuters had expected factory orders to gain 0.2 percent in January after a previously reported 3.4 percent tumble in December. The department also said orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft – seen as a measure of business confidence and spending plans – rose 0.5 percent instead of the 0.6 percent advance reported last month. Manufacturing has been hurt by softening demand in Europe and Asia as well as a strong dollar and lower crude oil prices, which have caused some energy companies to either delay or cut back on capital expenditure projects. A labor dispute at […]

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ENLARGE The U.S. economy returned to its sluggish trajectory late last year, though underlying signs of strength suggest growth will pick up in 2015. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, expanded at a 2.2% annual rate in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday, weaker than an earlier 2.6% estimate.The latest figures show the 5% pace in the third quarter and 4.6% in the second quarter were unsustainable. For 2014 as a whole, GDP expanded 2.4%, slightly better than the average 2.2% growth of 2010-13. By comparison, the economy grew an average 3.4% a year during the 1990s. Still, Friday’s report showed that consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of output in the U.S., matched its fastest pace since early 2006 during the fourth quarter. Personal consumption expenditures advanced 4.2%. Consumers have been the brightest spot in recent months. […]

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. economic growth braked more sharply than initially thought in the fourth quarter amid a slow pace of stock accumulation by businesses and a wider trade deficit, but the underlying fundamentals remained solid. Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.2 percent annual pace, revised down from the 2.6 percent pace estimated last month, the Commerce Department said on Friday. The economy grew at a 5 percent rate in the third quarter. With consumer spending accelerating at its quickest pace since the first quarter of 2006 and sturdy gains in other measures of domestic demand, the slowdown in growth is likely to be temporary. Growth in consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, was revised down by one-tenth of a percentage point to a 4.2 percent pace in the fourth quarter, still the fastest since the first quarter of 2006. A tightening […]

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