Ian Shepherdson
Ian Shepherdson
Ian Shepherdson is an award-winning British economist. He is the founder and Chief Economist of Pantheon Macroeconomics, an economic research firm located in Newcastle, England, with an office in White Plains, New York. In February 2015, he was named The Wall Street Journal's US economic forecaster of the year for the second time, having previously won the award in 2003...
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It would be very helpful if the drop in confidence in June marked the start of a new trend, but with the job market still very tight we cannot yet be confident about this.
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The trend in claims has risen this year, in tandem with the clear drop in business confidence in the period before the war with Iraq. If claims are sustained at this level they will signal an acceleration in the rate of net job losses recorded in the payroll numbers.
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We expect a big drop in September: Katrina has depressed sentiment and pushed up jobless claims.
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Just about everyone who buys a house uses a mortgage, so a sustained drop in mortgage demand tells you where home sales are going, regardless of the current sales data.
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July sales always looked unsustainably high relative to the level of mortgage applications so a correction was due. This drop in sales does not mark the start of a sustained weakening.
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With the fastest productivity growth and biggest drop in unit labor costs in seven years, the numbers are certainly worth shouting about, but as yet we are far from convinced that much of the improvement is structural. Mr. Greenspan is of the same view, which is why rates are going up no matter what happens to productivity growth.
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One steep drop in housing starts does not make a downward trend, especially in a month which was very wet in the West and very cold in the Northeast. Still, the data are consistent with other signs of a softening housing market, most notably the drop in homebuilders' confidence. What really matters, though, is whether sales will fall fast enough to turn a softening into a collapse.
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We fully expect sentiment to drop sharply, putting in place the conditions for much softer consumer spending numbers.
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they strongly suggest that the trend in employment growth is slowing hard. A big drop in May payrolls may be in the cards.
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A big headline drop was always in the cards after the weather-assisted surge in January, which hugely boosted retail activity.
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It is impossible to tell how much of the drop simply reflects the inability of the seasonal adjustment to cope with the end of the auto retooling shutdowns, and how much is due to the underlying trend,
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The drop in stock prices is no excuse to beginning cutting rates, as some in the market desperately want to believe, ... Given where oil prices are and given what the fundamentals still suggest, I don't see the Fed doing anything for the time being.
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We expect the index to fall over the next couple of months as the latest huge surge in gas prices bites.
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We expect further gains over the next couple of months in the wake of the plunge in gasoline prices. If we're right, the data will signal first quarter consumption growth of the order of 4 percent.