by Hale Stewart (originally published at Bonddad blog) There Is No Commodity Based Inflation Consider the following charts (the top three area daily; the bottom is weekly): All prices are either declining or stable.
They are monsters The President and his GOP majorities in Congress are monsters. As one commentator on NPR put it yesterday afternoon, the President’s default mode is to toss an armed hand grenade into a room in order to create chaos. He can then pick out the most vulnerable, and use that leverage to enter […]
One more scene from the September jobs report: late cycle deceleration continues The rate of year over year job growth is probably the single best mid-expansion indicator, in part because there is very little noise in the Establishment survey jobs data YoY. But, as the below graph shows, going back all the way to 1948, […]
Scenes from the September jobs report On Friday I highlighted the difference between the results of the establishment survey and the household survey. A 2006 paper from the BLS (pdf) explaining the differences in how jobs are counted in the two surveys shows us why: Interviewers from the Census Bureau contact households and ask questions […]
Scenes from the September jobs report On Friday I highlighted the difference between the results of the establishment survey and the household survey. A 2006 paper from the BLS (pdf) explaining the differences in how jobs are counted in the two surveys shows us why: Interviewers from the Census Bureau contact households and ask questions […]
September jobs report: establishment survey stinks, but household survey rocks! HEADLINES: -33,000 jobs lost U3 unemployment rate down -0.2% from 4.4% to 4.2% (new low) U6 underemployment rate down -0.3% from 8.6% to 8.3% (new low) Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, […]
A thought for Sunday: of basic decency and humanity, and how the economy is shoring up the GOP A few threads of the Trump malAdministration came together this past week. The latest attempt to overturn Obamacare confronted Trump with a choice between his two main goals: basking in a Trump triumph vs. erasing all of […]
Ex-hurricane trend in September industrial production is positive As I outlined earlier this week, a reasonable temporary workaround for industrial production unaffected by the recent hurricanes is to average the 4 regional Fed surveys, minus Dallas, plus the Chicago PMI. Over the long run, each +5 in the average of the indexes is consistent with […]
Wow! Yellin confirms 2% inflation is the Fed’s ceiling You may have already seen this elsewhere, but in case you didn’t, Janet Yellin all but officially confirmed the other day that 2% isn’t in fact the Fed’s target, it’s their ceiling. Per the New York Times: Given that monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation […]
A hurricane workaround for industrial production Last week I mentioned that the regional Fed surveys plus the Chicago PMI can be used as a workaround to account for the effects of hurricanes on Industrial Production. It isn’t pretty and by no means is it perfect, but for the (hopefully only) two or three months that […]