Paul Samuelson On Knut Wicksell Something I have been doing for several years now is serving as Senior Coeditor of the Fourth Edition of the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, with the original one published back in 1894 in London (my coeditors are Matias Vernengo and Esteban Perez). As part of this effort, a multi-year […]
The labor market closes out 2021 on the best note yet The final economic data in 2021 was this morning’s report on initial and continued jobless claims. And the good news for workers continued. New claims declined back under 200,000 to 198,000, the best pandemic showing except for November 20’s 194,000, and December 4’s 188,000. […]
A Free Market is Always Full of Cheap Ideas I may have scoffed in the past at the notion of “the marketplace of ideas” but I am coming around to think that maybe it’s not such a bad metaphor. Back in the days of primitive economy, families, clans, tribes produced and consumed their own subsistence. […]
House price increases continue to show strong market at the end The last housing market data for 2021, the FHFA and Case Shiller house price indexes, were reported this morning. Both showed a very slight deceleration in the soaring prices that have marked this year. The FHFA purchase-only index rose 1.1% for October. The YoY% […]
A Looming Anniversary Passes Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union. I previously posted here about this looming anniversary, arguing that the large troop buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border along with the many strong demands being made by V.V. Putin of various parties reflected his high awareness […]
Commenter Blogger RJS Summary: Natural gas supplies above average for first time since April. Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 19-year low. Total oil & products supplies near a 7-year low. Total oil supply falls by most in 25 weeks. Gasoline supplies jump most in 20 months. Distillate’s demand falls by most in 5 years. DUC […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for December 20 – 24 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Surprisingly, so far the Omicron variant has had no deleterious effect on any of the data, and in particular, on restaurant reservations. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to […]
November Durable Goods: New Orders up 2.5%, Shipments Up 0.7%, Inventories Up 0.6%, MarketWatch 666, RJS The Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for November (pdf) from the Census Bureau reported that the value of the widely watched new orders for manufactured durable goods increased by $6.5 billion or 2.5 percent to […]
Income, spending, layoffs, and new home sales all point to a continuing expansion in 2022 We got our last batch of data before Christmas this morning. Almost all of the news was positive. I will be very brief.In the “coincident indicators” department, real personal income declined -0.2%, while real personal consumption expenditures increased less than […]
It’s A Wonderful Life: Faux Populism Somewhere I never saw a full version of this classic, Its a Wonderful Life, but here it is on Christmas Eve, an official Christmas classic. I was always suspicious of it, from all I had heard, but it looks less worth than I had heard. I mean, really, local […]