by Calculated Risk on 5/19/2016 06:21:00 PM

Friday:
• At 10:00 AM ET, Existing Home Sales for April from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The consensus is for 5.40 million SAAR, up from 5.33 million in March.


• Also at 10:00 AM: Regional and State Employment and Unemployment for April 2016

Brad Setser was a daily read for me years ago, and he has started blogging again at Follow the Money: It Has Been a Long Time

I stopped blogging almost seven years ago.

My interests have not really changed too much since then. There was a time when I was far more focused on Europe than China. But right now, the uncertainty around China is more compelling to me than the questions that emerge from the euro area’s still-incomplete union.

Some of the crucial issues have not changed. The old imbalances are starting to reappear, at least on the manufacturing side. China’s trade surplus is big once again—even if the recent rise in the goods surplus (from less than $300 billion a couple years back to around $600 billion in 2015) has not been matched by a parallel rise in China’s current account surplus. The U.S. non-petrol deficit is also big, and rising quite fast.

But some big things have also changed.

The United States imports a lot less oil, and pays a lot less for the oil it does import. That has held down the overall U.S. trade deficit.