Obama only briefly mentioned fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in last Tuesday's State of the Union speech, depicting the trade agreement as part of his bipartisan outreach to the GOP, while claiming it would boost U.S. exports.
Q4 2013 real GDP has come in at 3.2%, a good showing. Personal consumption expenditures was almost 70% of the growth whereas federal government spending took off almost a percentage point of GDP. Exports increased significantly while imports did not.
The Durable Goods, advance report shows new orders plunged by -4.3% for December 2013 after a 2.6% increase in November. The really bad news in this report is core capital goods declined by -1.3%. For the last two of three months durable goods new orders as a whole have declined. While December is shaping up to a bad month for the economy, a word of caution as durable goods are often revised dramatically.
The economy has been debilitated by the offshoring of middle class jobs for the benefit of corporate profits and by the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing in order to support a few oversized banks that the government protects from market discipline. Not only does QE distort bond and stock markets, it threatens the value of the dollar and has resulted in manipulation of the gold price.
The BEA has released revisions for Gross Domestic Product by Industry for years 1997 all the way to 2012. Unfortunately but not surprising, manufacturing was revised downward in their real value added to economic growth. Overall GDP grew 2.8% in 2012 and that year's better news is private goods GDP increased more in growth in comparison to private sector services.
The NAR reported existing home sales increased 1.0% from last month and are down -0.6% from December of last year. This is the 2nd decline from from year ago, previously not seen since June 2011. Existing home sales for the entire 2013 year, on the other hand, hit housing bubble levels not seen since 2006. For all of 2013, existing home sales increased 9.1% from 2012.
The amount of cash multinational corporations are stashing is at an all time high and economists are wondering why. A recent Federal Reserve research paper examined some of the reasons. A big one is multinationals pay no taxes on profits if they park them offshore. A stash of cash is building and the miser pile is now a mountain.
The wealth of the entire world is now divided in two, with almost half going to the richest one percent, and the other half to the remaining 99 percent.
In November 2013 the World Economic Forum released a 49-page report titled Outlook on the Global Agenda 2014. It says that, based on those surveyed, inequality is "impacting social stability within countries and threatening security on a global scale."
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