It appears that barring a sharp reversal in March, Europe will have had to rely largely on export-driven growth in the first quarter to have avoided double dip recession, as retail sales shocked with worsening back-to-back declines in both January and February. Even before this report, the OECD had already stated that they believed Germany, Europe' ( Read more... )

After several months of mere "technical" recovery, March may be the first month to exhibit genuine underlying strength in the national economy. Despite this critical development, potential pitfalls are still obvious to anyone not wearing rose colored glasses.

Econoday.com:

Released on 3/30/2010 8:55:00 AM For wk3/27, 2010 ( Read more... )

The UK is Clearly Trending With Rest of Europe, and Flirting With  Renewed Recession

BBC News: 
UK Retail Sales Suffer Sharp Fall on Snowy Weather

Poor winter weather drove UK retail sales down by 1.8% between December and January, the sharpest drop in 18 months, official figures have shown.

The fall was more than three times faster than analysts had ( Read more... )

In stark contrast to much of the data and news out last week, which all but screamed that the US has remained in recession into the fall despite a technical, and admittedly tentative estimate of positive GDP, data out this week covering the past few weeks do hold up the argument that recession is over and that the recovery is even gaining more of a ( Read more... )

As can be seen in the graph below, if this recession is indeed truly over, this would be the first recovery of the last 40 years where housing starts remained below 800,000 SAAR, which if adjusted for population should actually be running well north of even that number in a typical recovery.. It seems very reasonable to conclude that this recovery ( Read more... )

Generally, retail sales move in some fashion along with consumer confidence.

( Read more... )

While technically-speaking, the recession, the deepest of the post-WWII era and longest since the 1930s, may very well have ended somewhere between June and September, the recovery, at least for some time, may continue to be jobs-light, lob-less, or even job-loss. Combined with word that recession has ended, which encourages the previously ( Read more... )

Overseas, Germany & France were getting splashed on the front pages of mainstream financial presses for having their recessions end in the second quarter, as GDP for their Q2s both came in at +0.3% for the quarter (roughly +1.2% annualized rates). It can not be stressed enough that these most preliminary GDP estimates fly in the face of all the ( Read more... )

Reports from Econoday.com


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From Econoday.com

Released on 7/21/2009 8:55:00 AM For wk7/18, 2009   PriorActual Store Sales Y/Y change-5.7 %-5.8 %
Highlights
Redbook continues to report extreme rates of deterioration in same-store retail sales: minus 5.8 percent year- ( Read more... )