Take a breather

The financial markets have had several sizable selloffs in the last week. Thank goodness. Because the second quarter earnings season is essentially over, the emphasis now shifts from responding to the economic-wide insights provided by businesses in their earnings...

Excellent news on productivity

Good afternoon everyone, I have been talking about the difference between ephemeral economic growth vs. real economic growth for a while now. Real economic growth is closely approximated by productivity growth. So if we are looking for signs of an emergence from...

Mixed messages

I have been reading the business and economic news with interest over the last several weeks. Increasingly there are a lot of stories that contradict one another in the same newspaper and on the same day. This reporting regards the state of the economy and usually...

Unemployment percentage improves (!) barely

Since this is the 200th blog posting since I went live last October to address friends, family and associates’ concerns about the (then) impending recession, it almost seems obligatory to talk about the unemployment rate and unemployment. In the month of July...