Trusted Economic Perspectives

Investors will be focused on the Federal Reserve this week and our expectation is that it will finally announce an overdue tapering of quantitative easing.

Keynesianism can temporarily giveth, but ultimately always taketh away…and then some.

Politics today is in large part about pitting one group against another and convincing one side they’ve been treated unfairly.

In 2009, after overly strict mark-to-market accounting rules were altered, we said the Financial Crisis was over.

Last March, when the government was considering whether to lockdown the economy, we argued that the longer we stayed locked down the more permanent the damage we would do to the underlying economy.

If you’ve read our two most recent Monday Morning Outlooks, you know we raised our forecast for the S&P 500, but lowered our forecast for real GDP growth. How can that be?

We’ve been consistently bullish on stocks since 2009. This bullishness has paid off, although not every year; stocks fell in 2015 and 2018.

Narratives get more energy these days because of social media and cable TV, but they’ve always existed.

In an ideal world, analysts and investors wouldn’t have to spend much time, perhaps none at all, trying to manage around changes in government policy.

The ISM Manufacturing Index fell to 59.5 in July, below the consensus expected 61.0. (Levels higher than 50 signal expansion; levels below 50 signal contraction.)