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“Carney warns fall in migrant workers could push up wages and inflation” – Doh!
“There’s an old saying. Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining” (The Outlaw Josey Wales – 1976) The headlines, such as the one above from the Guardian may have juiced up the point a little, but underlying the attempted prevarication in his recent speech on Globalisation and inflation, this is pretty […]
Continue readingUS light vehicle sales for August
GM provided the standout in August, with its heavy incentives clawing back some of its earlier shortfalls in sales to deliver a +7.4% YoY improvement in domestic unit sales for August and bringing its YTD average to -2.4% and therefore slightly ahead of the overall industry’s -2.7% YTD decline as well as its principal domestic […]
Continue readingUS wage growth slows in August
In between hurricanes, German elections, North Korean bomb and missile tests and the usual Jackson Hole navel gazing fest for central bankers, the August non-farm payroll estimates from the BLS may have struggled to make the front pages. At +165k, net private sector job additions for the month (+174k excluding movements in seasonal adjustments), it […]
Continue readingUS adds +205k jobs in July – normally a positive for the US dollar, but now?
The problem of communicating a softening macro outlook is that it lowers interest rate expectations which in turn is a buy signal for not just investors, but also recruiters. So while the IMF cut its US GDP expectations for 2017 and 2018 by -20bps and -30bps respectively (both now to +2.1%) and currency markets have ‘drumfped’ […]
Continue readingP&G slashes digital spend with no impact – an ‘Oops’ moment for digital!
Those following Alphabet’s Q2 results may have noticed the changing mix driving revenues. While year-on-year organic revenue growth is still comfortably holding above +20% pa, it is increasingly driven by accelerating growth in paid clicks which are offsetting a higher rate of decline in the price per click that it receives. Given the auction basis […]
Continue readingYellen does virtuous – 5 years too late!
Confused? Well you should be be if you’ve been believing the usual output from the Federal Reserve. Contrary to the narrative of robust US economic growth and tightening labour markets requiring a normalisation of interest rates, things aren’t quite as rosy as Ms Yellen had been suggesting. Behind the increasingly absurd non-farm payroll data with […]
Continue readingJune US payrolls: Dead zone between Fed rate decisions
With the Fed having already edged up rates, June’s non-farm payrolls were going to have to be fairly spectacular to merit much attention as the ‘new’ Presidential grand tour moves to Europe and the G20. The reported MoM net job additions of +222k looked solid enough, although strip out government adds of +35k and Private […]
Continue readingUK consumers running on empty
If the UK consumer expenditure numbers reported by VISA in mid June suggest a stalling domestic economy, last week’s ONS release of the UK household savings ratio for Q1 suggests piggy banks are having to be raided to fund what little growth in expenditures we are seeing. This all seems a World away from the […]
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