Recent comments

  • April inventories were up 0.1% with a 0.2% increase in producer prices...it's only one month, but if it doesn't improve it could wipe as much as 200 basis points off GDP...

    Reply to: May Retail Sales Boost PCE Contribution to 2nd Quarter GDP   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • is going to be fairly solid so that makes Q1 just a bump. TBD on the employment report but the recent follows Q1.

    Reply to: May Retail Sales Boost PCE Contribution to 2nd Quarter GDP   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • The problem is that in effect a morally pure, "testimonial party" is hard-pressed to exist as any sort of weighty force in the actual political scene absent proportional representation, notably proportional representation of the threshold-free sort that exists in the Netherlands. The Constitution Party has certainly served a noble effect as a grounding pole for the more discerning traditional elements (even if actually voting for them may not always have been the wisest choice) to rally around. The question is to what extent that rallying is useful in an electoral cycle such as this and with a candidate such as Trump. That said, if they are going to field a candidate I agree with your recommendation. At the least it won't give the interventionists and immigrationists in the NeverTrump crowd that there is an electoral "pure conservative" line to validate their insane and stupid diplomatic and immigration policies.

    Reply to: The Constitution Party’s Donald Trump Dilemma   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • could be..i had been expecting that to reverse when it slowed down in 2015 but this year it looks like it's getting worse every month...

    Reply to: A Record Low for New Foreclosures, Another Record High for Average Time in Foreclosure   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Is that longer than the length of home ownership?

    Reply to: A Record Low for New Foreclosures, Another Record High for Average Time in Foreclosure   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • two people making minimum wage start at $32,000 a year. That is the least a husband and wife or two roommates can make if they work. The problem isnt household income...its the fact that most Americans do not work anymore. Why dont they report the number of hours worked when quarterly taxes are submitted? Because only 30% of Americans work full time jobs now. We are so rich, they dont need or want full time work to subsist.

    Reply to: Only 20% are Middle-Class, Most Don't Come Close   7 years 9 months ago
    EPer:
  • Bernie doesn't give a crap about American workers, his base is the alien heavy SEIU, selling US citizenship and free stuff for poor immigrants is their only revenue, without invasion they collapse.

    That "US WORKERS" crap Bernie pushes in speeches is for idiot drones that didn't notice him meeting with the Mexicans in CA that support permanent invasion with benefits rights, his Obama SEIU base.

    Reply to: Bernie Sanders vs Hillary Clinton on H-1B and Guestworker Visas   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • OIL

    Thank you for some honesty
    USA exports & imports about the same amount of refined product
    so it should not be deducted from their oil imports - about 9 MBD
    another reason it should not be deducted
    a country imports 100 ton of iron ore and exports 80 ton of steel
    does that mean they only imported 20 ton of iron ore?
    what nonsense - nor is exported refined product the same as crude oil
    America only produces 5 MBD conventional crude oil
    100 barrels of crude oil into a refinery
    107 out of refined product - crude & refined product are not the same
    so adding 7% is fraudulent
    also it doesn't BTU's
    and please consider
    you are making a cake - it requires 2 eggs whisked - that fluffs em 50%
    have you just added 3 eggs? NO!
    Neither should the 7% refinery gain be added - it is all part of their propaganda
    Thanks again for an excellent article
    I posted a segment on Google plus - G+
    site name is
    OIL WATCH Group
    thank you
    Gray

    Reply to: What the EIA Doesn’t Tell Us When Comparing US Output to that of Russia & Saudi Arabia   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • with this release, we can now attempt to estimate the economic impact of the retail sales figures from last week, which saw nominal sales rise 1.3%...for the most accurate estimate, and the way the BEA will be figuring 2nd quarter GDP at the end of July, we would have to take each type of retail sales and adjust it with the appropriate change in price to determine real sales; for instance, April's clothing store sales, which rose by 1.0% in dollars, should be adjusted with the price index for apparel, which indicated prices were down by 0.3%, to show us that real retail sales of clothing were actually up by 1.3% in April...then, to get a GDP relevant quarterly change, we'd have to compare such adjusted real clothing sales for April with the similarly real clothing consumption for the 3 months of the first quarter, January, February and March, and then repeat that process for each other type of retailer, obviously quite a tedious task to undertake manually....the short cut we usually take to get a ballpark estimate of real sales is to apply the composite price index of all commodities less food and energy commodities, which was down 0.1%, to retail sales less grocery, gas station, and restaurant sales, which accounts for nearly 70% of the aggregate sales...those sales were up by just about 1.4% in April, while their composite price index was down 0.1%, leaving real retail sales excluding food and energy sales up by roughly 1.5%...then, for the rest of the retail aggregate, we find sales at grocery stores were up 1.1% in April, while prices for food at home were up 0.1%, suggesting a real increase of around 1.0% in the quantity of food purchased for the month...next, sales at bars and restaurants were up 0.3% in dollars, and those dollars bought 0.2% less, so real sales at bars and restaurants were only up by about 0.1%...and while gas station sales were up 2.2%, gasoline prices were up 3.4%, suggesting a real decrease in the amount of gasoline sold, with the caveat that gas stations sell more than gasoline, and we don't have the breakout on that...weighing the food and energy components at roughly 30% of total retail sales, we can estimate that real retail sales in April were up slightly less than 1.3% from March…then, to get an approximation of the real adjusted changes for the 3 months of the first quarter, we check Table 9 in the pdf for the March personal income and outlays report, which shows real sales of goods were down 0.2% in March and down 0.6% in February....that means real, inflation adjusted April retail sales were 1.1% higher than those of February but only 0.5% higher than those of January....that still leaves real retail sales at an average of 1.0% greater than those of the first quarter, which is growth at annual rate of more than 4.0%, a pace which if continued throughout May and June, would add roughly 0.96 percentage points to 2nd quarter GDP...

    Reply to: CPI Shoots Up 0.4% As Gasoline, Medical, Food and Shelter Prices Rise   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • Since last 9-28-15 we have moved into the lost confidence model on the Public side. Public side is usually government. I believe now it is also Banks. Private is where capital will move to. For Information on this goto MartinArmstrong.com. If and when the electronic purse happens the war on cash (Freedom) will be in full bloom. Will not be able to buy or sell with it in terms of their system. That is slavery. People do trust the Banks. That will make it their blockchain fail.

    Reply to: Corporate World Takeover Through Trade   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • there has also been several disruptions of global oil supply, such as rebels attacking pipelines in Nigeria and the massive wildfires in Alberta, that have brought it closer to global demand...

    Reply to: Oil Inventories Drop by 3.4 Million Barrels as EIA Fudge Factor Swings by 664,000 Barrels Per Day   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • I'm assuming the sudden 50¢ jump in prices is due to hope and greed for the summer driving months. Not actual demand.

    Reply to: Oil Inventories Drop by 3.4 Million Barrels as EIA Fudge Factor Swings by 664,000 Barrels Per Day   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • Classical and Modern Economists from Adam Smith to the Monetarists assumed money was something governments or central banks controlled. To be historical, the 1800s of U.S. banking saw forms of money issued by banks and backed by banks either by dollar notes or gold called specie. Suppose the bank could say what the bank says what the currency is worth? Welcome to Bitcoin. Bitcoin was born with the claim that its quantity (and so it was argued) and value are fixed. Good as gold it would seem. Not so fast. Along comes HyperLedger. With hyperledger, the banks can hold bitcoins but create trades and turnover through Hyperledger. See Blockchain.info. What is most amazing is that the new HyperLedger specie is backed by all the big names in money, State Street, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and the London Stock Exchange. So the new form of exchange, controlled by the Banks will proliferate new money without any limits! “Once an idea gets out there, you can’t stop it from propagating,” Krishna says. The questions here are so many that I dare not ask them. Let's just say, totally disruptive man!

    Reply to: Corporate World Takeover Through Trade   7 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  •  there was widespread media misreporting of the revisions included in the March report on construction spending (pdf); for example, Bloomberg's Econoday said "February is now revised sharply higher; Reuters called it "an upwardly revised 1.0 percent jump in February", and the NY Times reported that the "February increase represented an upward revision by the government from its initial estimate that spending had fallen 0.5 percent"...they are are all wrong...February construction spending was originally reported at $1,144.0 billion annually, and it has now been revised down to $1,133.6 billion annually, and hence spending in March was below what was originally reported for February...what happened was there was a large downward revision to January spending, from the revised $1,150.1 billion figure reported last month to $1,122.0 billion with this report; hence the downwardly revised February spending was up from from January, even though it was lower than originally reported...reporters apparently took the change in the MoM percentage change to mean there was an upward change in spending...

    even worse than that, the NY Times quoted someone at Barclays in reporting "Barclays thinks the government will revise up its estimate of the economy's growth last quarter to a 0.7 percent annual rate, from its initial 0.5 percent estimate"...we have a $28.1 billion downward revision to January spending, a $10.4 billion downward revision to February spending, and March construction spending that was almost certainly lower in most sectors than was estimated by the BEA, who in their technical notes for 1st quarter GDP, noted they assumed an increase in nonresidential construction, and an increase in residential construction...not even considering what ever the downward revision to assumed March spending might be (GDP investment categories include more than is included in this report) the $38.5 billion downward revisions to January and February alone would subtract more than 0.23 percentage points from GDP, just the opposite of what Barclays is alleged to have forecast....

    Reply to: Q1 2016 GDP Blows a Raspberry with a 0.5% Increase   7 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • That might be coming from trade data, notoriously revised on the 1st revision. Also, inventories might be less contraction then originally assumed, but you're right, construction spending goes into GDP and that is a whopper, assuming that's nonresidential.

    Reply to: Q1 2016 GDP Blows a Raspberry with a 0.5% Increase   7 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • oh, everyone who has an opinion has a projection...probably the most cited projection comes from the IEA, who says they expect a global balancing of supply and demand the second half of this year, largely due to a big drop in US production...i dont see any evidence of that yet; US oil output has fallen 13 out of the last 14 weeks, but the average weekly drop has been between 15 and 20 thousand barrels per day...it will take more than a few months at that pace to balance the global oversupply, which is typically put at 2 to 2 and a half million barrels per day, especialy with Iran just now getting their production back online...

    Reply to: Bets Drive Oil Prices Up 20% In April Despite New Inventory Records Each Week   7 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • What is the projection for oil to stay low, the timeline?

    Reply to: Bets Drive Oil Prices Up 20% In April Despite New Inventory Records Each Week   7 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • we still have a record glut and the talks at Doha this weekend failed to produce an agreement to cap oil output at current levels, with the Saudis even threatening to pump another million barrels a day, so we may yet test February's lows

    Reply to: A 33 Month High for Oil Imports Means Yet Another All Time High for Oil Inventories   7 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • most consider "product supplied" as the equivalent of consumption. EIA publishes that weekly, too:
    http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WRPUPUS2&f=W

    Reply to: Crude Inventories Fall for 1st Time in 8 Weeks; Refined Products at Another Record   7 years 11 months ago
    EPer:
  • We can derive the total weekly consumption (really daily !) numbers with the standard manufacturing production/inventory formula.
    Beginning Inventory 4/8 + Production - Ending Inventory 4/1 = Daily. The EIA overview.pdf contains Total Stocks 4/1 1363.9 + Total Production , a complicated number, of 19,987 and an ending inventory of 1357.0. 1364+19,987 = 19984 thousands BPD Consumed. The street word of 20 million barrels per day is about right. It is the speculative lure of the change in stocks that drive price, not the steady consumption of 20M BPD.

    One year ago the same calculation is 1226 -1357 + 18995 = 18864 = thousands BPD Daily Consumption. What a difference in consumption ! Next look at the differences in prices. With significantly lower prices consumption increases in the U.S by 5.5 %

    Reply to: Crude Inventories Fall for 1st Time in 8 Weeks; Refined Products at Another Record   7 years 11 months ago
    EPer:

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