ISM, Construction & Savings Rate Provide Good News

On June 1, the Institute of Supply Management (ISM) reported its manufacturing index rose to 42.8 percent in May from 40.1 in April. That’s the highest level since the 43.4 of September 2008.

This is very good news because the ISM states that an index above 41.2 is consistent with growth in real GDP. This is despite the fact that the index has to be above 50.0 to indicate that the manufacturing sector is growing. Click here to read the full post and comment (Insights subscribers) »

Some Good News on the Most Important Parts of the Economy

On March 2, BEA released some surprisingly good news on personal income and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) for January 2009. After four months of increasingly gloomy reports, the first data for 2009 looked much better.

Total disposable personal income, the raw material for PCE that accounts for over 70.0 percent of real GDP, rose to a record level of $8.9 trillion in January. That drove real PCE to $8.2 trillion, above the fourth quarter 2008 level.

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