Tim Iacono's Blog

A new report from the New York Fed shows a disturbing trend (if you’re a bank, that is) about consumer credit as the borrow-and-spend baby-boomer generation heads off into the sunset with a chastened millennial generation not able/willing to take up the slack.

Via this item at Zero Hedge comes the chart below from Reuters depicting the state of the world, interest rate-wise, strongly suggesting that rate cuts are in the offing down under.

Anyone interested in digging deeper into the quandary over what’s responsible for the declining labor force participation rate in the US should have a look at this item from Doug Short over at Advisor Perspectives where...

Given the remarkable increase in the number of stock trading accounts and soaring margin debt in China over the last year or two, stories such as the one below about a farmer losing his life savings...

After Wednesday’s five-year high in existing home sales and fresh record high in median sales price, here’s a quick look at where home values are rising the quickest and where bidding wars are common via this WSJ...

As was the case a year ago when harsh winter weather visited the East Coast, the first quarter of 2015 is turning out to be something of a bust GDP growth-wise as evidenced by the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow forecast shown below.

In Davos, former Treasury Secretary and would-be Federal Reserve Chairman Larry Summers warns the U.S. central bank to put off any increases to short term interest rates, citing deflation and secular stagnation as...

Via this story by Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post comes the graphic below showing how personal savings rates have changed over the years by age group. Recall that the personal savings rate is simply disposable income less spending, so...

The Commerce Department reported(.pdf) that retail sales unexpectedly fell last month, down 0.3 percent in September after an increase of 0.6 percent in August. The declines were broad-based and this is a possible indication of slowing growth in the U.S. economy.

On a year-over-year basis, retail sales rose to a 13-month high of 5.0 percent, up sharply from the winter slowdown that saw the annual sales gain dip to as low as 1.6 percent.