- “Delinquency rates for credit card borrowers are approaching 2008 levels across all age categories.“
- Source.
Macroeconomics
Snippets on the big picture.
Chinese Economic Surprise
- Time for a rebound?
- Source: Dailyshot.
Productivity
- Always surprising how, despite the venture-backed tech boom, productivity hasn’t increased.
- It will be interesting to see if AI starts to push this up.
- Source: Daily Shot.
Digital Prices are Falling
- “Online prices in June 2023 fell 2.6% year-over-year (YoY), the most significant decrease since May 2020“
- 11 out of 18 categories were down.
- The sharpest falls are seen in electronics, computers, and appliances.
- Source.
Chinese Deflation
- Could China be about to export deflation around the World?
- Source: DailyShot
Canadian Population Boom
- This really is an outstanding chart and has huge ramifications for the economy.
- Most of this is down to immigration.
- Source.
Home Size
- After a short-term rise during the pandemic, the average size of single-family homes in the US is declining again.
- Source.
New Home Sales and Recessions
Panama Canal
- Unprecedented drought in the Panama Canal is forcing some ships to offload 40% of their cargo.
- It takes 200m liters of water per ship, that is pumped from Gatun lake.
- Last year we had drought issues in the Rhine.
- The coming El Niño weather pattern could lead to more issues for global transport supply chains.
- Chart source: Tema ETFs.
Collection Rate of Employment Stats
- Response rates to the important payroll survey are well below the historic median.
- This usually leads to revisions.
Job Openings to Unemployed Workers
- Far from concerning levels.
- Also, see Exhibit 3 in the Source for a pent-up source of labour demand.
- Source.
Wage Growth by Income
- Wage growth is decelerating in the US, especially so for those in the highest income bracket.
Truflation
- This alternative measure of inflation has been falling for months – and currently sits at 2.86%, well below official measures.
Greece
- The Greek economy is doing rather well, and starting to peel away in terms of growth.
- Barclays, via FT Alphaville, argue it might be entering a third positive “megacycle”.
- This analysis agrees – “Greece is growing, investment is booming, employment prospects are improving, the number of businesses is moving up, salaries are increasing, and the country is becoming less poor, not more“.
TLTRO
Truck Tonnage
- “The American Trucking Association’s Truck Tonnage Index saw one of its worst monthly declines on record in April going back to the early 1970s”.
- NB Covid whipsaw likely distorted many of these supply chain based macro indicators.
- Interestingly new truck sales are hitting record highs.
- Source.
Earnings Surprises
- Rare to see this level of positive surprises when a recession is expected.
- Source: themarketear.com.
Downtown Cellphone Activity
- Activity in San Francisco is 31% of pre-pandemic levels, New York 74%, Chicago 50%, and Boston 54%.
- Though interesting that Miami (seen as a big pandemic winner) is also 69%.
- Source.
Kotkin on China and Communism
- Kotkin is a scholar of Russia and the Soviet Union. Most famous for his three-part (only two are published so far) biography of Stalin.
- In this interview, he turns his attention to China.
- There are a lot of interesting points made here.
- “There are two subjects at Party School that are absolutely dominant in the Chinese case. One is the supposed decline of the United States … But the other big subject — in fact, it’s an even bigger subject for them — is not having a Soviet collapse in China“
- Interesting to read this together with Dalio’s latest on the US v. China.
Weather
- Don’t forget we just had one of the warmest winters in the Northern Hemisphere in the past 50 years.
- Source.
