– by New Deal democrat On Friday I noted that real personal spending on goods, especially durable goods, had declined in September. If we have reached a tipping point on that metric, a recession in the near future looks much more likely, even as spending on services continues. Late last week we also got further evidence […]
– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha There are some minor changes, but no big turns in trends. But the recent change in trend that has been further reinforced is the sharp deceleration in growth in withholding tax payments that began in October. The bulk of the evidence suggests that […]
– by New Deal democrat Personal income and consumption is one of the two big monthly reports on the state of the average American, in addition to the jobs report. This month it has the added virtue of being the “least stale” monthly report, as it was issued only five weeks later than scheduled. Ever since […]
– by New Deal democrat The good news is, we are back to the normal weekly jobless claims releases. The really good news is that this week’s number, except for one week in 2022, was a new 50 year low! The bad news is that Holiday seasonality is very much in play, so take the good […]
– by New Deal democrat Probably the most important economic news this entire week was this morning’s ISM services report. Services are about 75% of the economy, and this report was for November, which means it is the most wide-ranging and current datapoint we have at the moment. And the news on this front was almost […]
– by New Deal democrat Although not published by the federal government itself, the Fed’s measure of industrial production relies on some federal data, and thus it was not updated during the government shutdown – which means that this morning’s update is likewise stale, being for September. Industrial production has been much less central to the […]
If I am reading New Deal democrat’s commentary correctly today , we definitely are flying blind. We are not getting all the economic detail we need to know which way the wind is blowing economically. Not a good situation to be in and Republicans appear to be ok with this scenario. It can because they […]
“November ISM manufacturing report indicates deepening stagflationary contraction” – by New Deal democrat Normally we begin each month with reports on both construction spending and manufacturing. But even though th federal shutdown has been over for more than three weeks, data releases have been both very sparse and very stale. In particular, construction spending for August […]
– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. In the aggregate, consumer spending remains robust. On the other hand, as I pointed out yesterday with my aggregation of the various regional Fed reports on manufacturing and services, the largest sector of the US economy appears to be stagnant or even shrinking […]
“Regional Fed manufacturing and services indexes for November show manufacturing rebound, continued rampant price pressures, and stagnant employment” – by New Deal democrat Although the federal government has resumed reporting economic data, it is spotty and woefully stale, from August and September. As a result, the two big sources for current data remain the regional Feds […]