Trump’s presidency is 1/8 done. The economy is still on Obama’s autopilot. Where’s the DOOOM?!? Today marks half a year since Donald Trump took the Oath of Office as President. I just wanted to note that, so far, absolutely nothing of significance has been enacted to affect the economy. It’s still basically Barack Obama’s expansion. […]
Trump: the endgame There was some economic news last week which is important for the long term, and I’ll try to post about it later today or tomorrow, but in the meantime … I’m as interested in the latest Trump-Russia tidbit as the next person, but really, don’t we all already know the endgame? Remember […]
A thought for Sunday: Trump voters and the “peasant mentality” I am currently reading a comprehensive tome on 19th century European history, “The Pursuit of Power,” by Richard J. Evans. One episode that made a big impression on me was the decision by Otto von Bismarck (no conservative he) upon the establishment of the German […]
June jobs report: great headline, but once again where are the wages?!? HEADLINES: +222,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate rose +0.1% from 4.3% to 4.4% U6 underemployment rate rose +0.2% from 8.4% to 8.6% Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want […]
Reality begins to sink in for GOPer economic confidence While we are waiting for tomorrow’s employment report, here’s a little something to chew on. In the immediate aftermath of the Presidential election — as in, by the end of that week — Gallup’s measure of economic confidence soared, from its 2016 average of roughly -10 […]
Happy 8th Independence Day, economic expansion! In lieu of a more traditional Independence Day post, in view of the fact that the economic expansion turned 8 years old this week, I thought I would take a moment to highlight how far we have come. Because as mediocre as some things are, we have come a […]
Five graphs for 2017: mid year update – by New Deal democrat At the beginning of the year, I identified 5 trends that bore particular watching, primarily as potentially setting the stage for a recession next year. Now that we are halfway through the year, let’s take another look at each of them. #5 Gas […]
May industrial production: no change in trend This was a post I meant to put up Friday, but was pre-empted by the important housing news. May industrial production came in unchanged. But that didn’t stop Doomers, who had been silent about April’s big increase in manufacturing, from trumpeting its 0.4% decline (go ahead, just try […]
This is a Big Deal: housing permits and starts now a long leading negative I’ll have more to say next week, but let me just drop this right now: this morning’s housing report was a Big Deal. FRED doesn’t have the graphs yet, but here are the numbers from the Census Bureau cite. Graph of […]
It’s Sunday, so I take a break from nerdy econ analysis and speak my mind. Last November 9 we woke up to a living nightmare. The next four years were bound to be awful. The only question was, how awful? The very tiny silver lining as of now is that, so far, it has been […]