Paul Krugman on the Great Illusion of economic rationality and war — in 2008 Paul Krugman wrote an article this past week about how free trade can enable authoritarians, and how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may be putting an end to globalization. I went looking for an excerpt that wasn’t behind a paywall, and look what I […]
The worst interest rate upturn since 1994 is likely to produce the worst housing downturn in over a decade No economic news of note today; but tomorrow we will see housing permits and starts for March, and on Wednesday existing home sales. So let’s take an important look at housing. The recent increase in mortgage […]
Real aggregate payrolls and sales There seems to be some pushback against the narrative that real wages have declined, based on compositional effects (lower pay occupations vs. higher pay occupations). While some of that is true (for example, 5/6’s of all leisure and hospitality losses have been recovered, vs. 3.4% actual job *gains* since February […]
The production side of the economy remained solid in March Industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, increased in March by 0.9%. February was also revised higher by 0.4%, but January was revised lower by the same percentage, for a wash. Manufacturing production also increased 0.9%. Total production thus made another new record high, while […]
Real retail sales in March continue to show a weaker consumer sector, forecast weaker jobs reports For the past few months, I have suspected that a sharp deceleration beginning with the consumer sector of the economy was more likely than not. The retail sales report for March was consistent with that suspicion. Nominally retail sales […]
Coronavirus dashboard for April 13: watching the BA.2 “bump” The BA.2 “bump” (h/t Dr. Eric Topol) is upon us (and hopefully a “bump” is all it is). Let’s take a look at where we stand. Cases bottomed 8 days ago at 28,378. As of yesterday, they had increased to 32,835: Hospitalizations have continued to decline, […]
Jobless claims: the employment sector of the economy continues to do just fine [Note: I’ll comment on this morning’s retail sales report for March separately] Initial jobless claims rose 18,000 to 185,000 from their 50+ year last week. The 4 week average rose 2,000 from last week’s all-time low to 172,250. Continuing claims declined -48,000 […]
March consumer inflation part 2: I told you so; the Fed *must* start paying attention to house price indexes This is the second part of my take on the March consumer inflation report. As you may have already read, total inflation clocked in at +1.2% for March alone! YoY consumer prices are up 8.6%, the […]
March consumer inflation part 1: real wages decline sharply The March consumer inflation report was particularly important, and particularly bad. So much so that I am going to divide my comments into two separate posts. First, the news on real wages was terrible. While nominally nonsupervisory wages rose 0.4% in March, since inflation rose 1.2%, […]
Housing affordability update: prices vs. mortgage payments; and ramifications for the economy No economic news today (Monday 4/11), and most States didn’t report new COVID cases over the weekend, so let’s take a look at something else; namely, housing affordability, which I’ve been meaning to update for several weeks. The first graph below compares 4 measures […]