Corporate Leverage

September 12, 2023 Economists like to keep an eye on the amount of leverage amongst corporations.  When corporations take on huge amounts of debt in relation to their net worth, any economic downturn will be much more severe than it would otherwise be as corporations...

Corporate Cash

September 12, 2023 Corporate cash holdings in the first half of 2020 as the government quarantine basically caused the economy to stop dead in its tracks.  Firms needed to raise money wherever they could to keep them going until such time as the virus eased its grip...

Small Business Optimism

September 12, 2023 . Small business optimism fell 0.6 point in August to 91.3 after having risen 0.9 point in July.   These levels are roughly in line with the low point in the March/April 2020 recession which seems excessively low to us.  They are well below the...

Trade Deficit

September 9, 2023             The trade deficit widened by $1.3 billion in July to $65.0 billion after narrowing by $3.1 billion in June. While volatile on a monthly basis, the deficit has narrowed dramatically since April of last year...

Corporate Profits

August 30, 2023 Corporate profits from current production (corporate profits before tax with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments) fell by $11 billion in the second quarter which works out to an annualized rate of decline of 0.4% after after having...

Trade-Weighted Dollar

June 9, 2022 The trade-weighted value of the dollar, which represents the value of the dollar against the currencies of a broad group of U.S. trading partners has risen 7.7% from where it was at this time last year and it is expected to continue to rise in value...