Why wouldn’t it be?
We will write about the current U.S. fiscal situation in depth later during the month but in the meanwhile here is the story in some graphs.
The total Federal debt (doesn’t include individual state debt) now stands at $21.52 trillion,
Continue reading “The current U.S. fiscal situation in graphs”
The U.S. 10-year Treasury constant maturity yield minus the 2-year Treasury constant maturity yield spread has been a good indicator of past recessions. Yield curve inversion which happens when the spread turns negative and has preceded the last seven straight recessions. The 10-year Treasury constant maturity yield minus the 2-year Treasury constant maturity yield is the lowest since the last recession at only 10 bps.
Continue reading “The yield curve inversion plus why banks and banking stocks are impacted by it”
The European Central Bank (ECB) only started its Quantitative Easing (or QE) program in March 2015 in order to fight ultralow inflation in the Eurozone (also called the Euro Area). It somewhat worked by weakening the Euro (€), increasing exports, giving the stock market a boost and drastically lowering financing costs for European governments and corporations. This caused the ECB balance sheet to soar over €4.5 trillion or 45% of Eurozone GDP.
Households in Canada are accumulating debt at the slowest pace in 35 years as interest rates continue to rise. Household credit growth has slowed to 3.5%, the slowest since 1983.
Early during the summer, we wrote how the global economy was scorching hot then just like the weather but winter was coming. Weather wise (unless you are in Australia or New Zealand) winter is here and it appears the global economic winter is not too far away.
U.S. student debt outstanding now stands at a record $1.56 trillion, almost doubling in the past 8 years.
The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported that the German GDP shrank by 0.2% in the third quarter (vs the second quarter) of 2018. Growth was +1.1% on the same quarter a year earlier following increases of 2.3% in the second quarter (calendar adjusted: +2.0%) and 1.4% in the first quarter of 2018 (calendar adjusted: +2.1%).
As widely expected, wages are rising in the UK, at least partially due to labour shortages down to Brexit. Nominal wage growth was fastest in a decade, but real (adjusted for inflation) wages are still lower than a decade ago. We recently also wrote about why wages weren’t rising despite record employment and labour shortages.
Both the European Commission and the IMF recently published their forecasts on growth in Europe. Both have lowered forecasts for growth between 2018 and 2020 in Europe.
UK gross domestic product (GDP) in volume terms was estimated to have increased by 0.6% between Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2018 and Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2018.
In comparison with the same quarter in the previous year, the UK economy has grown by 1.5%, continuing its relatively subdued performance over the last year.
