Productivity

Roaring Productivity Versus AI Bubble

Jan 8, 2026 2 min read paid

Relax: The AI bubble is the cover story in the latest BloombergBusinessweek (image). From a contrarian perspective, that's bullish because it signals that the bubble won't burst, if it even exists. We have AI Fatigue. We recently recommended underweighting the Magnificent-7 because their AI arms race is forcing them to spend heavily on AI infrastructure that could become obsolete quickly and that could be unprofitable as

Ed Yardeni

From Trade Wars To Trade Deals

May 8, 2025 3 min read paid

President Donald Trump will need to declare victories in his trade wars with multiple countries around the world sooner rather than later. He and his fellow Republicans have to avoid a recession caused by his tariff wars. Otherwise, they risk losing their thin majorities in both houses of Congress later in 2026. In addition, court cases are piling up that challenge the President’s legal authority to declare a crisis

Ed Yardeni

ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: May 5–9

May 4, 2025 3 min read

US employers are confounding the naysayers–and complicating the Federal Reserve's decision this week. It's no secret that President Donald Trump wants the Federal Open Market Committee to cut interest rates at its May 6-7 meeting. Yet the economy isn't cooperating, as companies added a robust 177,000 jobs in April (chart). US average hourly earnings, meanwhile, are up 3.8% over the past

Ed Yardeni

A Bond Vigilante In Trump's Court

Feb 6, 2025 3 min read paid

Trump 2.0 is borrowing a page from the Clinton administration's playbook, specifically the one in which Robert Rubin and James Carville warned Clinton that he had to respect the power of the Bond Vigilantes and maintain fiscal discipline. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent yesterday said that he and President Trump are less concerned with the federal funds rate (FFR) and instead are hoping to contain the 10-year

Ed Yardeni

Sticky Landing For Inflation?

Nov 13, 2024 3 min read paid

Today's CPI report suggests that inflation may be getting stuck north of the Fed's 2.0% target. The headline and core CPI inflation rates rose 2.6% and 3.3% y/y during October. Goods prices are still deflating. But supercore inflation, rent inflation, and wage growth all rose last month suggesting they are getting sticky at relatively high rates. This along with strong economic growth

Ed Yardeni

The Economic Week Ahead: November 4 - 8

Nov 3, 2024 3 min read paid

The blockbuster event in the week ahead is Tuesday's presidential election. We're rooting for gridlock, or a divided government. Both parties seem intent on passing policies which would widen the federal government budget deficit that's already too wide. Notwithstanding the stimulative outlook for fiscal policy, the Fed is widely expected to cut the federal funds rate (FFR) by 25 bps on Thursday to a

Ed Yardeni

Lost Decade Ahead For Stocks With Only 3% Annual Returns?

Oct 22, 2024 3 min read

We've been asked to comment on yesterday's grim forecast by economists at Goldman Sachs that the S&P 500 will produce annualized returns of only 3% (before accounting for inflation) over the next 10 years. They reckon that the range of possible outcomes includes -1% at the low end and +7% nominal returns at the high end. In our opinion, even Goldman's optimistic

Ed Yardeni

The US Economy Is Roaring!

Oct 2, 2024 3 min read

Last Thursday on September 26, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released several very significant upward revisions to real GDP, real GDI, personal income, and personal saving. Collectively, they blew away the hard landing scenario. They didn't leave much if any room for the soft landing scenario either. They suggest that productivity growth will be revised higher and unit labor cost inflation will be revised lower. These revisions

Ed Yardeni

The Great Normalization

Sep 5, 2024 3 min read paid

Oops: Bloomberg reported on Tuesday after the stock market closed, that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had sent Nvidia a subpoena related to a potential antitrust investigation. We speculated that a leak of that information might have caused Tuesday's selloff. On Wednesday after the close, Nvidia denied that it had received a DOJ subpoena. Go figure! Today's economic data were consistent with our short-term thesis (i.

Ed Yardeni

Don't Sweat Tomorrow's Payroll Revisions

Aug 20, 2024 3 min read paid

Tomorrow, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QECW) for the 12 months ended March 2024. These data are used to revise previous payroll employment reports. They come with a lag, but are generally accepted to be more accurate than the initial monthly releases, which were already revised twice. The initial 12-month revisions can be large, recently having swung by more than

Ed Yardeni

Risk On, Risk Off

Aug 1, 2024 2 min read paid

Today was a good day for the diehard hard-landers and the "stag-disinflationists." They're probably high fiving each other. We are in neither camp–we expect a continuation of “immaculate disinflation,” i.e., a growing economy with subdued inflation. We're high fiving over today’s productivity and labor costs report. In any event, bond investors are certainly enjoying themselves; the 10-year yield fell 12 basis

Ed Yardeni

Will The Fed Join The Rate-Cutting Pack Of Central Banks?

Jun 6, 2024 2 min read

US stocks rose to record highs on Wednesday. European stocks did the same today after the ECB lowered its official interest rate to 3.75%, down from a record 4.00%, where it has been since September 2023 and the first cut since 2019. Leading the rate-cutting pack of the major central banks was the People's Bank of China, which lowered its prime rate last year on August

Ed Yardeni

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