Fears of European crisis way overblown

Good morning everyone! For today’s post I wanted to highlight for you why I feel that current investor fears about a collapse of the European economy are way overblown. As far as I can tell most of the fears are sourced in a fear that Spain will be the next...

Land vs. machine

Conflicting economic data have been released today. On one hand, we have U.S. Commerce Department data showing that housing starts in May fell 10% to a 593,000 annual rate.  This figure compares to an expected rate of 648,000.  Clearly this is a big miss relative to...

Data supports blog prediction

Bloomberg is reporting this morning that demand for long-term U.S. financial assets surged in March and April.  Recall that I predicted this would happen because of the turmoil in Europe, as well as the fact that the U.S. economy is strengthening.  In March the net...

Not surprisingly, May retail sales fall

Last month retail sales fell 1.2% according to the U.S. Commerce Department.  This compares to an expected increase of 0.2%. Analysis: While the press is questioning the strength of the economic recovery because of the fall in retail sales, I am not.  The month of May...

Number of job openings increasing rapidly

The Associated Press is reporting today that the number of job openings in the U.S. increased to 3.1 million in April, from 2.8 million in March.  The April level is the highest level since December 2008.  Most importantly, the increase of 300,000 job openings came...