CBO budget forecast, April’s retail sales, CPI, PPI, and industrial production, Q1 household debt & credit

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:26:00 GMT

Source: marketwatch666.blogspot.com --- Sunday, May 19, 2013
on Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their Updated Budget Projections for Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023 (pdf; summary here ); which, in creating their ten year forecast, assumes that current laws on taxes & spending do not change and no surprises intervene over the duration, chances of which happening are between slim and none; at any rate, this report is a quarterly update to the mandated Budget and Economic Outlook that they published in February , & is remarkable if only for the massive shift in their fiscal projections in such a short time (the sequester was already assumed in that forecast)...expecting revenues to rise more rapidly than spending over the short term, the CBO estimates that the budget deficit will shrink to $642 billion this fiscal year (ending Sept 30) down from their earlier estimate of $845 billion , which will make it the smallest deficit since 2008 ; this is a 24% reduction in their deficit projection of just 3 months ago , which was due in part to the unexpected profitability of federal mortgage giant Fannie Mae , which will contribute $59.4 billion, including a one time recredit of $50.6 billion in deferred-tax assets, after reporting a record quarterly profit , and a record $50.6 billion profit from student loans, 43% higher than expected in February ...the result, according to the CBO, will be a further reduction in the relative size of the deficit to 4.0% of GDP, which will shrink fu ...

Evidence of Bubble in Stock Prices when Compared with Industrial Production

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:11:22 GMT

Source: econintersect.com --- Sunday, May 19, 2013
by Lee Adler, Wall Street Examiner Industrial Production fell by 0.5 percent in April on a seasonally adjusted basis after having increased 0.3 percent in March and 0.9 percent in February, according to the Fed. The consensus estimate was for a decrease of 0.2%. Economists had been missing to the optimistic side on most forecasts for the past several months. This month they course corrected and now their estimates are too low. The media only pays attention to this silliness because it has nothing better to do. I’m more interested in how the the trend of actual, not seasonally manipulated, economic data lines up with the performance of the stock market, since there is some historical correlation. Read more » ...