Viewpoints: August 2019

Corporate profits rebounded in Q2, rising 5.3%, reversing the near 5% decline of the prior two quarters based on the updated figures released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The up and down pattern in profits has become a [...]

Chinese government, are you subsidizing your manufacturers/assemblers such that they are selling us goods at less than their costs of production? Regardless of whether you are doing so, you keep selling us goods at prices less than we [...]

The negative differential between the yield on the Treasury 10-year security and the rate on federal funds suggests that, at best, the pace of U.S. economic activity will slow significantly in a few quarters ahead or, at worst, the [...]

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank's estimates of state coincident activity for July show fairly good growth over the past year, but signs of weakness—and greater dispersion in the distribution of growth-- more recently. For a [...]

President Trump has imposed higher tariffs on U.S. imports from Mainland China, in part, to narrow the bilateral trade deficit that the U.S. runs with China. The president's tariff policy appears to be working. As shown in Chart 1, [...]

Most states saw little or no change in the number of jobs in July. Five states report statistically significant gains. Texas’s 35,200 was the largest absolute increase; Utah’s 0.7% gain was the largest percentage rise. Florida was the [...]

Recessions are far from being alike and their symptoms and causes differ over time. Despite its many shapes and sizes the historical regularity that an inverted Treasury yield curve has coincided with recession has raised concern now [...]

The Trump Administration, with support and consent from Congress, has cobbled together a lopsided federal budget, loaded with upfront stimulus, financed with huge borrowings, only to be reversed in future years with doubtful spending [...]