By Robert Romano Slower growth, flattening wages, bottoming interest rates, lower inflation expectations, less borrowing, and slowing job creation have all become staples of Allianz chief economic adviser Mohamed El-Erian’s oft-quoted “new normal.” El-Erian’s “new normal” hypothesis in 2009, when he was still with Pimco, anticipated “coming out […]

By Rick Manning In many ways, the economy is better going into 2015 than it was a year ago, but in many others, the trend lines are troubling at best. The labor participation rate is at lows not seen since Jimmy Carter was president in the late […]

By Robert Romano The Disability Insurance Trust Fund is set to run out of funds in 2016 according to the Social Security Trustees , having lost $113.1 billion since 2009 alone. One might think the shortfall has come about due to the two-year payroll tax holiday that was enacted in 2010. However, little reported has been the fact the holiday was completely offset by reimbursements from […]

By Robert Romano “Somehow, Senate Republicans in their push to reclaim the majority in 2014 failed to inform voters of their apparent intention to raise taxes on gasoline by 12 cents, a 65 percent increase from the current 18.4 cent federal gas tax.” That was Americans for […]

By Robert Romano “The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will provide new market access for Made-in-America goods and services.” That is the U.S. Trade Representative’s description of a new proposed trade agreement between the U.S. and Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam, which the White House is asking Congress for fast track authority to […]

By Robert Romano While the headline 5 percent real growth annualized in the third quarter has garnered much of the attention from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ latest report published last week, it may be premature to proclaim that a robust economic expansion is upon us. When the 2.1 percent contraction in the first quarter is taken into account, the economy has only grown at a tepid 2.7 percent rate in the […]

By Robert Romano Most rational observers should agree that in order to create jobs and boost wages, the economy must grow. That is certainly true. However, because government spending is included as a part of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, […]

By Robert Romano The Senate Budget Committee Republicans tweeted out an interesting piece from the New York Times’ Claire Cain Miller , which in part notes a dramatic drop in labor force participation in the U.S. economy. It quoted a key portion of the piece : “More than 16 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working, up from 5 percent […]

  By Robert Romano So far, the story that has been written on the dramatic drop in the price of oil has been that of an increase of supply. This part is true, based on data compiled by the Energy Information Agency. Worldwide production of oil is in fact up year over year as of August , from 89.9 million barrels […]