US consumers . . . still consuming Aside from sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for partial motor vehicle sales from February to be reported later, there’s no economic news of note today. But Tuesday mornings each week we do get chain store sales from the previous week. And if you’ve been paying attention, you […]
January real personal income consistent with either slowdown or incipient recession Real personal income (less government transfers) is one of the four coincident indicators the NBER looks at in determining recessions. Since January’s numbers were reported this morning, let’s take an updated look. Truth be told, real personal income is actually a short lagging indicator. […]
Housing: prices follow sales, February 2020 edition One of the consistent things I have written about the housing market for going on 10 years is that interest rates lead sales, and sales in turn lead prices. Last week with the continued increase in housing starts and permits we got further proof of the former, and […]
Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: February 22, 1869 On February 22, the Senate took up the revisions that the House of Representatives had made to their proposals from one week prior. The House had struck from the Senate’s version, as sent to the House, the section extending the protections of the Amendment to qualifications for office, as […]
Regional Fed Manufacturing Indexes Improving It’s been a really slow newsweek so far, with no important data until tomorrow. Until then, here’s a note of interest. This morning’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey was the third regional report in a row (after Richmond and Dallas in the last week of January) to show a strong rebound […]
Production, transportation, and sales show a stalled economy Below is a graph I put together in a discussion of transportation that I’ll probably post next week at Seeking Alpha. The idea behind the graph is that (1) everything that is produced needs to be transported to market; i.e., the two metrics should move essentially in […]
Housing analysis at Seeking Alpha; updated jobless claims I have a more detailed analysis of yesterday’s very positive housing permits and starts data, and what it means for the economy for the rest of this year, over at Seeking Alpha. As usual, clicking over and reading helps reward me a little bit for my efforts. This […]
Housing continues to surge Low interest rates continue to fuel a strong upsurge in new housing construction. I’ll put up a more detailed post later, but for now simply note that housing permits, both overall and for the less volatile single family housing component, made new expansion highs, at levels not seen since 2007. Housing […]
Real retail sales continue flat in January; production sector still in recession Retail sales increased nominally by +0.3% in January, while December was revised downward by -0.1%, for a net gain of +0.2%. Since consumer inflation increased by +0.4% during those two months, real retail sales were unchanged. On a per capita basis, they declined […]
Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: February 9, 1869 (2) The Senate votes to reform the Electoral College As I mentioned several days ago, the Senate endured a pair of marathon sessions on February 8 and 9, 1869, and considered a variety of subjects. Perhaps most breathtakingly, they discussed further amending the Constitution to ensure that the […]