My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha – by New Deal democrat The trends in the high frequency data that became apparent after last summer have continued, and if anything are intensifying. In particular, a real surge in commodity prices and somewhat in a mirror image, the US$ decline which is beginning to […]
– by New Deal democrat To briefly reiterate, although the government shutdown ended over two months ago, much of the official monthly data – including on sales and spending – is stale, dating to November and even earlier. So the most current measures of these are the ISM manufacturing and non-manufacturing reports, due next week, and […]
– by New Deal democrat Let’s take our normal weekly look at jobless claims. As a general reminder, these are a good high frequency short leading indicator for the economy as a whole, and also somewhat noisily for the monthly unemployment rate. In the past several months, I have highlighted what appears to be a “regime […]
– by New Deal democrat Although the last federal government shutdown has been over for 2.5 months — and a new one might begin this weekend — with the exception of a few headline indicators like inflation, industrial production, and employment, most of the data is still lagging by at least one month, i.e., it has […]
– by New Deal democrat For the past year, my view has been that the housing market is in recessionary territory, although that has not translated to the economy as a whole. As per usual, home sales lead house prices; and that trend continued with the Case Shiller and FHFA repeat sales house price indexes through […]
– by New Deal democrat With another likely government shutdown looming at the end of this week due to DHS funding, we are still playing catch-up from the last one that ended in November. This morning’s edition of stale data was durable goods manufacturing for November. One of the stories of the latter part of last […]
– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. The trends from last year are continuing so far this year. On the plus side, initial jobless claims are very low while stock prices continue near all time highs, and consumer spending is on a tear. On the minus side, the US$ started […]
– by New Deal democrat Now that we have the very important personal income and spending data through November, here is a look at the widely acknowledged monthly indicators that the NBER has highlighted in determining whether the economy is continuing to expand, or is contracting. The below link includes nonfarm payrolls (blue), industrial production (red), […]
– by New Deal democrat The news from this morning’s personal income and spending report for October and November was almost all good – with one major exception. To cut to the chase, real income rose slightly, but real spending rose substantially. Which, if you are following basic math, means that consumers dipped into their […]
– by New Deal democrat We will get the very important personal income and spending updates for the government shutdown months later this morning, which should finally tell us whether or not there was a mini-recession during that time. In the meantime, let’s take our regular weekly look at jobless claims, as to which, to reiterate, […]