Capital Investment

Durable Goods Orders declined in November 2019 according to the Census Bureau.  This measure for orders of wares expected to last three years or longer fell 2.0 percent in the month alone.  Year-over-year, the tally is even worse, down 3.8 percent. Ouch!  However, it isn’t as bad as the headline suggests. 

Durable goods orders made back some of their prior losses in October 2019 according to the Census Bureau.  After declining a downwardly revised 1.4 percent in September (originally minus 1.1 percent), they increased 0.6 percent.  Unfortunately, this latest uptick was not enough to push the year-over-year statistic into positive territory.  As you can see in the chart above, it ha

Many magazine covers and article headlines might lead folks to believe robots are taking over the labor market. Heck, even Atlas has written notes regarding expectations of greater automation in our economy. While firms have been able to produce cool robot videos like this one, there seems to be something missing in the data. This note will explore a couple of the glaring omissions.

America’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 2.6 percent on an annualized basis during the second quarter of 2017 according to the first of at least three estimates from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This represents an acceleration compared to the economy’s pace in the first three months of this year when output grew by just 1.2 percent (downwardly revised from 1.4 percent).