Slow pace of improvement in jobless claims continues This week’s new jobless claims were essentially unchanged (but at their pandemic low), while continued claims continued their decline, also to a new pandemic low. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims declined by only 543 to 738,166, just above October 3’s revised pandemic low of […]
The Morning After Last night was truly a dark night of the soul. The rule of law in an American Republic simply will not withstand the re-election of jobless claims together with a continuing GOP majority in the Senate. Not to mention the prospect of continuing to shelter in place for perhaps years as the […]
September housing construction and October manufacturing both on a tear It’s the first of the month, so we get the last laggard for September (construction spending) and the first read on October (ISM manufacturing). Both were very positive in their important components. While total construction spending was only up 0.3% from a downwardly revised August, […]
The final 2020 Presidential Electoral College forecast: Biden 350, Trump 181, 7 toss-ups Here is my final nowcast for the Presidential 2020 election, based on State rather than national polling in the past 30 days, since that directly reflects what is likely to happen in the Electoral College. For this final installment, I am also […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 26 – 30 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Neither of the two constraints determining where the economy will go in the next few quarters are economic themselves. Rather, they are (1) the course of the pandemic, which will in turn be […]
The final 2020 Senate nowcast: 51 Democrats, 48 GOPers, 1 true toss-up Here are the final maps for the Senate, including all polls since October 1. I’ll post the Presidential nowcast separately later since it is going to be significantly longer this week. To refresh, In the first map below: – States where the race […]
Jobless claims: continued slow progress A quick note about the first report of Q3 GDP released this morning: the rebound is only about 2/3’s of the decline from last year. We are still about 3.5% below that number. On a *relative* basis, this was a “good” number, but on an absolute basis, this is still […]
Personal income and spending both surprisingly continued to increase in September, plus a note on GDP Yesterday the first estimate of Q3 GDP was reported. Since this report includes 2 long leading indicators, it gives us insight into what the economy might be like in the 2nd half of next year. I have a […]
Coronavirus dashboard for October 27: The EU is now worse than the US Total US confirmed infections: 8,777,432* Average US infections last 7 days: 71,833 (new record high) Total US deaths: 226,695 Average US deaths last 7 days: 806 (vs. recent low of 689 11 days ago) *I suspect the real number is about 15,000,000, […]
An examination of the Framers’ arguments as to how the US Supreme Court would function: The Federalist Papers No’s. 78, 79, and 81 This is a follow-up on yesterday’s post regarding the history of the Judiciary under republics. In that post I pointed out that the concept of an independent judiciary is a modern one that started […]