Don’t Be Fooled

by Karl Denninger Market-Ticker.org

Friday’s rally was Fast-n-Furious, apparently set off by the PCE data release.

This is one of the more-amusing pieces of data the BEA releases every month and one of the most-opaque. There’s simply nothing other than narrative behind these numbers at all; they’re literal “trust us” figures.

Well, ok, whatever I suppose.

Except they weren’t good.

PCE (that is, expenditures) in chained 2012 dollars — that is, constant dollars — were down 0.1%. Somehow “disposable personal income” was allegedly up two ticks in constant dollars and five ticks in current (inflated) dollars, which makes no sense because income was up only three ticks.