As the once beloved Yuan sinks deeper and deeper into the sunset, Chinese Rush to Open Foreign Currency Accounts. US dollar strength is highly likely to reverse soon if indeed it has not already peaked. That does not necessarily...
Retail sales rose a mere 0.1% in November according to the Census Department Advance Monthly Retail Trade Report. The increase was against an October reading revised from +0.8% to +0.6%. Effectively, sales declined, led by autos.
The race between states is on. And it will escalate. Congratulations to Michigan for leapfrogging every other state in acceleration of the global push for driverless vehicles. Michigan not only became the first state to allow driverless testing...
The Dallas Police and Fire Pension plan is severely underfunded. Not even a $1.1 billion taxpayer bailout the plan officials request will make the plan whole. Discussion of a possible freeze in lump sum payments led to a run on withdrawals.
Lakshman Achuthan and the ECRI posted some interesting charts about the uneven jobs recovery since 2007. Minorities fared far better at job gains on a percentage basis than whites. The ECRI’s charts provide yet another look at...
Self-driving truck maker Otto will conduct tests in Ohio this week, on Ohio route 33 and the Ohio turnpike. Next year, the route 33 corridor is scheduled for fiber-optic cable network and sensor systems to aid autonomous driving.
Despite a massive switch from big box retailers to online shopping, car sales are still done the old-fashioned way, via a network of franchised dealerships, typically selling a single manufacturer’s lineup of cars. Tesla does sell its own cars directly, but some states do...
Today’s employment report shows an increase of 161,000 jobs. So far this year, job gains for the nation have averaged 181,000 per month, compared to an average monthly increase of 229,000 in 2015.
Variant Perception posted a couple of excellent charts on how rising rent and healthcare costs may impact consumer spending and related retail equities. Let’s tune in.
The word of the day is “ugly”. That’s how Steen Jakobsen, Saxo Bank CIO, and chief economist describes the US presidential campaign, broken social contracts, public debt, and productivity. Things are so ugly, Jakobsen says...
Earlier this month, the German Bundesrat voted to ban new gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles from EU roads starting in 2030. Days later, the German Transport Minister Calls Internal Combustion Ban “Utter Nonsense”. Let’s take a look at...
The Tax Foundation has an interesting analysis of Trump’s tax plan compared to Hillary’s. Hillary is negative on GDP, capital investment, wage growth, and jobs. Trump is positive on all four under two different models.
The Dallas police and firefighters pension fund has just 45% of the money it needs to cover benefits. The fund rates to be out of money in 15 years at the current rate of withdrawals. For those eligible, the sane thing to do is retire...
Vancouver hopes to burst its massive property bubble that was fueled by foreign buying, mostly from China. In July, British Columbia imposed a 15% tax on foreign sales for the Vancouver region, effective August. Tax rates on...
Inquiring minds may be interested in a cornucopia of relevant numbers on Deutsche Bank including market cap, leverage, capitalization, deposits, liquidity, derivatives multiple ways, and systemic risk. Systemic risk numbers are from...
Alison Carnwath, chairman of one of the UK’s largest construction firms says the Era of Robots is at hand. Thousands of builders will lose jobs as machines take over building London skyscrapers. There are 2.3 million construction jobs in the UK.
I thought Trump did poorly. Trump missed a chance to go after Hillary about Libya, especially her statement “we came, we saw, he died” in which she bragged about killing Gaddafi. Libya erupted in a civil war following that event and...
Today the US Department of Transportation (DOT) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued their long-awaited report onAutomated Vehicles Policy. The report, Accelerating the Next Revolution in...
Speculation has it that Fed governor Lael Brainard, an interest rates dove, would signal she was ready for rate hikes in a speech today. Instead, I wrote, Strike Three on September Rate Hike: Brainard Urges “Prudence”.
