Economic News

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superrific said:
That GDP reading of 4% was complete bullshit. A couple of caveats:

1. I don't know if the numbers can be cooked. People who know say they can't. On the other hand, the numbers have been really wacky ever since Trump fired the BLS commissioner. Could be coincidence. Probably is coincidence. But it's a thing that makes me say hmm.

2. It was 3Q and the data cited here is current. But an economy doesn't go from 4% to zero overnight.

Basically, the issue is that all of the auxiliary signs of economic health, like consumer confidence, employment growth, issues with debt servicing, late or defaulted consumer debt, etc -- all of that points to an economy that is bad. Then this GDP number comes along and it's amazing. Something isn't right.

My theory has been that inflation is being undermeasured. Essentially, the GDP figure is calculated like this: businesses report their production in terms of what they actually pay or receive. Then the total is adjusted downward for inflation. If inflation is understated, then the GDP would be insufficiently deflated and thus would be too high. And it would also explain why everyone is feeling pinched in terms of affordability even though the data looks OK.
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Post in thread 'Economic News' Politics - Economic News
 
StrangePackage said:
A friend of mine was laid off from her lab in October. Still hasn't found work.
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I read about Boston being particularly hit hard by science grants being pulled. Apparently it had a real concentration of bio-science employees and now it is a large collection of unemployed bio-science employees.
 
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The housing market is more complex than this suggests but I assume conceptually it will be widely popular (until folks who want to sell their house in the next few years discover the market is a lot tougher than it was yesterday).
 
Neither Freddie nor Fannie have anywhere close to $200B in liquid cash. Not even close. And that's a good thing because it would be a colossal waste of liquidity.
 
nycfan said:
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I just read the article because the headline did not square with the dire recent manufacturing data. I found the below quotes to strike a cord quite discordant with the headline.

“Because of a surge in imports earlier this year, the overall trade deficit from January to October was still up 7.7 percent from the previous year.”

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that there was a lot of noise in the data for the month, and that gold and silver markets in particular had been “bonkers.”


Another force narrowing the trade deficit in the month was a collapse in pharmaceutical imports, he said. Drug companies stockpiled pharmaceuticals ahead of tariffs going into effect on the sector on Oct. 1, though many firms were ultimately spared from tariffs.

“Cutting through the noise and getting to the underlying signal in the data, it suggests to me that the deficit is as large as its ever been,” Mr. Zandi said.”
 
www.ctvnews.ca

Airlines are retreating from the U.S. Here’s where Canadians are flying to instead

Canadian airlines pulled back in a big way from the United States over the past year and boosted flight volumes elsewhere -- especially the Caribbean -- with no sign of a cross-border rebound on the horizon.
www.ctvnews.ca www.ctvnews.ca

Canadian airlines pulled back in a big way from the United States over the past year and boosted flight volumes elsewhere -- especially the Caribbean -- with no sign of a cross-border rebound on the horizon.

Canada-U.S. flight volumes fell more than 14 per cent year-over-year in the fourth quarter among Canada’s five largest carriers -- Air Canada, WestJet, Porter Airlines, Air Transat and Flair Airlines -- according to figures from aviation data firm Cirium.

Florida, California and Nevada saw some of the biggest drops in capacity from Canadian carriers, with volumes to Las Vegas down by a third from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, as passengers looked farther afield, airlines ramped up flight volumes in the Caribbean and South America -- by 36 per cent last quarter and 45 per cent in the current one.

The number of domestic flights and trips to Europe and Asia also rose from 2024 as airlines scrambled to rejig their networks.

Former transport professor Jacques Roy says Canadians’ distaste for U.S. visits triggered by President Donald Trump’s tariff war and social policies nonetheless marks a problem for airlines north of the border, which will have to compete in more crowded fields overseas and domestically.

“There is a natural reaction from Canadian travellers, who try to get their suntan from other destinations,” he said.

Nor are there signs of a return to business as usual. Canadian airline schedules show a 15 per cent drop in flight volumes during the first three months of this year compared to 2025 -- when people had already started to shy away from travel to a country whose leader spouted 51st-state rhetoric in reference to its northern neighbour.

First-quarter volumes for Arizona-bound flights are scheduled to fall by more than 20 per cent year-over-year. For Florida, the figure is nearly 19 per cent.

...

The first-quarter decrease amounts to nearly 850,000 seats, according to Cirium.
 
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