This may be the case as covered on Nouriel Roubini's blog.
This doesn't look like spin on his part. There appears to be a big error with how much autos should have contributed to the number.
Read the post, it included an entire Bloomberg article about this.
On a side note, as I publish this, Blogger has moved all of my sidebar links to the bottom of the page into the main body of the blog. It did this on its own without my making any changes. You may be aware that Blogger has been having a lot of problems lately, goody.
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7 comments:
Roger,
Most of the time when the links drop down to the far right side of the page it is due to your inadvertent posting something too wide for the main portion. Such as your image from your video podcast. I am not sure how you can correct it, but usually if you add something like ---> height="300", width="400" <--- this usually corrects the problem.
It could be bloggers fault however. But that is my experience with this darn problem. See if you can identify an image that is too wide in your regular posts.
Bob
Great blog! I wish I had 1/2 of your traffic!
Bob,
TY!, if you are correct it would be the youtube video that will drop off soon. Thank you again, that makes a lot of sense.
Roger...I think that Tony C referred to auto issue on RM.
Nevertheless...I'm reminded that one must don their Sherlock Holmes cap in looking at any of this data. Today I spent a little time with FRED (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/) I plan to map the loan loss reserves among the reporting entities--both in terms of geography and bank size. My thesis is that bank P&l's have not begun to reflect the impact of a slowing economy and potential "issues" with both business and commercial loans. Yes, I think that I'm nuts.
Did you try to republish your template?
Leisa:
With regards to your being nuts.
Commercial construction is generally a lagging indicator. It will often show strong numbers going well into a recession.
The other Big Picture (http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/)has an article about about the real estate problems affecting commercial retail building in his weekly round up. McGraw Hill tends to puff commercial construction issues so as not to offend its advertisers. The real story is in the chart embedded in the story.
Looking closely at the chart you will see Y-O-Y Commercial Construction peaked in 3Q.
Commercial Buildings
2005 3Q $77.6 Billion
2006 3Q $75.1 Billion
Industrial Building
2005 3Q $13.4 Billion
2006 3Q $11.1 Billion
Only Institutional (Govt.) was up.
(13.4 vs 11.1)
Since institutional spending is often based around tax receipt increases, it often almost runs counter-cyclical to the general economy.
I am not sure why you are thinking you are nuts, but a careful look at some of the less reported data is indicating that we are already in some form of downturn. If your business has any sort of cyclical aspect to it, you would be crazy to completely rely on the mixed message that comes from the financial media.
As Barry Ritholtz notes (http://tinyurl.com/y3tjxs), the GDP growth number will get reported 3 times -- this Advance GDP, Prelim, and then Final -- so there are two more revisions yet to come. Roubini (and Ritholtz, et al) clearly think those revisions will be downward, possibly quite strongly downward to well below 1%.
The US equities market(s) appears to have partially shaken off the 1.6% number for now but the bond market continues to like it, just not as much. International equities seem to be stabilizing too except for a number of emerging markets which continue to sell off; hot money getting nervous perhaps.
With the exception of mega-cap and so-called defensive stocks which appear overbought, breadth and sponsorship generally appear thin although major indices (RUT aside) still seem to have an upward bias. Perhaps it's a sign that movies of 19th century magicians (e.g., The Prestige) are coming out these days; this market just seems to be levitating with nothing underneath it at all.
Think I'll take this moment of upward bias to sell a bit more and give my hedges a tweak. We'll see what the next GDP revision, the "preliminary" report, has to say but at this moment I'm taking the under. Not that I think the incredible, levitating market will necessarily pay a lot of attention even then (sheesh).
When it comes to making money the market is always 'right' so I'm just following the trend, trying to protect myself as I go, but I feel compelled to add that my faith in fundamentals, to say nothing of the stock market as a predictive mechanism, is really being tested here.
PS: Roger, the problem with your blog formatting is probably being caused by the "The Big Picture For The Week Of October 29, 2006" post. I checked your source code and the width setting for the video frame is "600" which is incorrect (and too wide); that is, the frame should be 425x350, not 600x350.
Fix that and all should be well.
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