Tag: december

January 26, 2016 0

Retail Sales vs. Consumer Confidence; Unwarranted Fed Faith in Wrong Surveys

By News Desk

Conference Board Consumer Survey The consumer conference board does a paper survey every month on consumer confidence. The board’s technical notes say (emphasis mine) "The targeted responding sample size – approximately 3,000 completed questionnaires – has remained essentially unchanged throughout the history of the CCI." I called up the board with a simple question: How many surveys do you send out to get 3,000 completed questionnaires

January 26, 2016 0

"Temporary" Capital Controls Coming to China?

By News Desk

The Wall Street Journal hits the nail on the head with this headline: Yuan’s Fall Is Just ‘Noise’ Amid Deeper China Woes . When the financier George Soros attacked the British pound in 1992 and famously “broke the Bank of England†he was trading on a conviction that the currency was misaligned. Britain devalued after squandering its reserves in a vain defense.

January 19, 2016 0

Mind Bending

By News Desk

Tweet Eli and Tamino have posted about the obvious long time deviation of the lower troposphere satellite temperature records often called TLT.  Eli and Steve Mosher, with friends and cynics have been doing a dosy do at ATTP and Rank Exploits .