The House Democrats just released their drug pricing plan (summary) on the 19th. I read through it rather quickly and I found it to be interesting and having targets which could work. Rather than jump right into this, let’s talk about purchasing a bit and then what I believe would be better. In a purchasing […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for September 23 – 27 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. If you’re wondering why it’s so late, it’s because SA pretty much shut down between Friday afternoon and this morning. Anyway, recession risks are rapidly receding, at least through the 4th Quarter. As […]
The New US-Japan Trade Agreement Lost in the shuffle this past week was one piece of good news for Trump: a tentative trade deal with Japan that he and Japan’s PM Shinzō Abe signed in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting. While it is largely a favorable deal, it does […]
UkraineGate: What Will Volker Say? I am referring to Kurt Volker: The president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has revealed text messages of conversations between himself and senior officials at the State Department that he says show they endorsed his controversial dealings with Ukraine…During an appearance on Fox News show The Ingraham Angle last night, Giuliani revealed 15 […]
Personal spending shows consumers OK; durable goods shows producers still struggling This morning’s reports on personal income and spending continue to show a consumer that is doing alright. Meanwhile durable goods orders continue to show a production sector that is struggling. First, real personal income (red in the graph below) rose +0.4% in August, while […]
Initial jobless claims continue near expansion lows I’ve been monitoring initial jobless claims closely for the past several months, to see if there are any signs of stress. This is because the long leading indicators were negative one year ago, and many – but not a majority – of the short leading indicators have recently […]
The White House released this document on Wednesday, September 25, 2019. It details a July call between President Trump and President Zelensky of the Ukraine. About midway through it, there is a warning of the contents not being a “verbatim transcript.” I have taken some time to include the notes (red) which are found at […]
August new home sales continue rebounding trend Let me start out my look at this morning’s August new home sales report with my typical housing mantra: Interest rates lead sales Sales lead prices Prices lead inventory We saw all of that in this morning’s report. First, the trend of rising single family sales continues, and […]
The incipient housing choke collar: July prices update Three months ago I first wrote about the concept of a “housing choke collar” constraining economic growth, to wit: The FHFA and Case-Shiller price indexes have only decelerated to a point where they roughly match median household income growth. This makes me wonder if prices for new homes will […]