US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending July 22nd indicated that despite another large oil withdrawal from the SPR, increased production from our wells, and a refinery slowdown, we still needed to withdraw oil from our stored commercial crude supplies for the 4th time in 6 weeks, and for the 21st time over the past 35 weeks, mostly because of another big increase in our oil exports.
Our economy shrunk at a 0.9% rate in the 2nd quarter, a second consecutive contraction, as greater personal consumption of services and an increase in exports were more than offset by lower personal consumption of goods, a decrease in fixed investment and weaker investment in inventories, which subtracted more than 2 percent from GDP growth....
Tuesday of the past week saw the release of OPEC's July Oil Market Report, which includes details on OPEC & global oil data for June, and hence it gives us a picture of the global oil supply & demand situation at a time when Chinese demand was curtailed by restrictive Covid lockdowns, while the supply of Russian oil was curtailed by sanctions imposed by the West
The Second Estimate of our 4th Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that our real output of goods and services grew at a 7.0% rate in the quarter, revised from the 6.9% growth rate reported in the advance estimate last month, as slower growth of personal consumption of services and of exports than was previously estimated was more than offset by greater growth of personal consumption of goods, fixed investment, and a smaller contraction of government....in current dollar
US oil supplies are at a 13½ year low, but oil exports are at a 8 month high; SPR is at a 19½ year low after biggest draw since August 2011; gasoline exports are at a 39 month high; distillate supplies are at a 95 month low; total oil + products supplies also at a 95 month low after across the board drawdowns
In the 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump promised to reform the H-1B work visa program. That should have been the least controversial of his plans, as the visa has long been recognized by both major parties as having major problems. Almost all the major candidates in 2016 — Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Clinton and Sanders — were critical of the program.
Wednesday of this past week saw the release of OPEC's June Oil Market Report, which covers OPEC & global oil data for May, and hence it gives us a picture of the global oil supply & demand situation during the first month of the two month agreement between OPEC, the Russians, and other oil producers to cut production by 9.7 million barrels a day from an elevated October 2018 baseline.
To estimate the impact of the change in PCE on the change in GDP, we have to compare July's real PCE to the real PCE of the 3 months of the second quarter. When we compare July's inflation adjusted PCE of 12,778.2 billion to the 2nd quarter’s real PCE of 11,819.6 billion, we find that July’s real PCE has grown at a 36.605% annual rate from the 2nd quarter.
Thursday of this past week saw the release of OPEC's April Oil Market Report, which gives us a picture of the global oil supply & demand situation in March, after the breakdown of OPECs agreement to cut oil production in the first quarter, when Saudi and its allies were engaged in an oil price war against the Russians and US shale, but before last week's agreement to cut production by 9.7 million barrels a day.
The 5 year annual growth rate of personal consumption was revised down from 2.8% to 2.7%, the 5 year annual growth rate of private investment was revised up from 2.2% to 2.5%, the annual growth rate of exports was revised from 1.1% to 1.3%, the annual growth rate of imports was revised from 2.6% to 2.5%, and the growth of government investment and consumption was revised to a 1.9% rate from the 1.8% rate that had been indicated by GDP reports prior to this revision...
This week we're going to review OPEC's August Oil Market Report (covering July OPEC & global oil data). As you’ll see, it shows there was a large shortfall in the amount of oil produced in July, a story that doesn’t seem to be being told elsewhere, as even the analysts don’t read the entire report (100+ pages)
The May report Personal Income and Outlays from theBureau of Economic Analysis gives us nearly half the data that will go into 2nd quarter GDP, since it gives us 2 months of data on our personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which accounts for nearly 70% of GDP, and the PCE price index, which is used to adjust that personal spending data for inflation to give us the relative change in the output of goods and services that our spending indicated.
Since the media largely missed what the data from OPEC's February Oil Market Report (covering January OPEC & global oil data) actually showed, and since Saudi jawboning about oil supply and demand in advance of the Aramco IPO has been keyed to keeping oil prices higher, we'll take a quick look at that report, which is available as a free download.
The unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 14.7%. That is a 10.3 percentage point jump in a month and a record since the government has been keeping labor statistics, 1948. While the jump is directly attributable to the Coronavirus, the decline in jobs is across the board. Worse, the damage from Covad-19 is starting to be permanent. It's so bad the graphs cannot adequately display the unemployment horror due to the scale.
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