World trade in merchandise is a reflection of the global goods-producing economy. And it just can’t catch a break. The CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, a division of the Ministry of Economic Affairs,...
South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping Co., the world’s seventh largest container carrier and a unit of Hanjin Group, Korea’s 10th-largest conglomerate that also controls Korean Air Lines, has been in financial trouble for a long time....
In Palo Alto, a small town of about 67,000 souls, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, about an hour south of San Francisco, in the middle of Silicon Valley, and part of the 9 million people...
In July, a sharp mechanism started working: one of the hottest commercial real estate markets in the world, and one of the most expensive, began to deflate. And the hiss is deafening. Capital values for offices in...
“The worst is over.” That has been the meme in the oil business in the second quarter. Folks in Houston’s and Calgary’s office sector, companies that supply the oil patch, and everyone else associated with...
An amazing thing happened at the Republican Convention when some unexpected language showed up in the official 66-page Republican Platform 2016, a document that a delegate from Texas enthusiastically called, “the most conservative platform in...
Remember TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program that the US Congress approved to bail out banks and other companies during the Financial Crisis? $700 billion were authorized, later reduced to $475 billion. The Treasury eventually...
The side effects of Negative Interest Rate Policies in Europe and Japan — what we’ve come to call the NIRP absurdity — are becoming numerous and legendary, and they’re fanning out across the globe, far beyond...
There is a misconception about the uncanny ability of very profitable US companies, like Microsoft and Apple, to park their profits overseas in order to dodge US taxes: the money from these profits that are...
The decline of US manufacturing in the cacophony of regional and national indices, which started in mid-2014, is a sight to behold. Today we got two national indices for April. Both added more gloom to the...
Another retailer is heading for bankruptcy. This time Aeropostale, with 800 teen-clothing stores, after three years in a row of losses. It’s “preparing to reorganize under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and could file as soon as this...
Rail freight volumes are an indicator of China’s goods-producing and goods-consuming economy, not just manufacturing, construction, agriculture, and the like, but also consumer goods. Thus they’re also an indication of consumer spending on goods. Alas, rail...
