October housing permits and starts flat vs. trend This morning’s report on housing permits and starts will do nothing to stop the now-received wisdom that higher interest rates, higher prices, (and the impact of the cap on the mortgage tax deduction) has caused this most important cyclical market to cool. On the other hand, they […]
Good payroll reports will probably coninue until next spring One of my continuing mantras over the years has been that spending leads hiring. It is simply demonstrable fact that, going back over 50 years, upward or downward changes in trend in consumer spending as revealed by retail sales, happen before similar changes in trend by […]
Real wages unchanged, real money supply increases in October With October consumer price inflation reported, let’s update a few metrics. First of all, while the YoY% growth in real wages increased: real wages were unchanged month over month, as both nominal wages and consumer inflation both increased by +0.3%:
Initial markers for a manufacturing slowdown now hit I have a new article that hopefully will get posted by Seeking Alpha later today. In the meantime … Two weeks ago I wrote an article establishing a manufacturing baseline for my forecast of an economic slowdown by about the middle of next year. I concluded that by saying: […]
Changes in labor bargaining power take up to a decade to be fully effective Sorry for the recent lack of posting on economic matters. Partly it is ennui, and partly it is a near total dearth of data in between the employment report a week ago Friday and tomorrow’s CPI report. Even a couple of […]
A baseline road map for the 2020 elections Now that the 2018 midterm elections are behind us, let’s take a preliminary look at 2020. It occurred to me that a decent baseline for that election is to simply take the total 2018 House votes for each state, assume that the Presidential vote in 2020 in […]
Big producer price increase in October – if a trend – is a problem In a light data week, this morning’s report on producer prices is certainly worth mentioning. As you may have read elsewhere, headline producer prices rose +0.6% in October, the highest reading in 6 years. The below graph compares that (blue) with […]
Setting markers for a 2019 slowdown in the jobs market How might a slowdown (not a recession, but a decline in growth to the 1%-2% YoY range in GDP) that I’ve been forecasting for around midyear 2019 manifest itself in the employment arena? One of my mantras is that “hiring leads firing.” In other words, […]
Final thoughts on the 2018 midterms Here are six takeaways from last night’s results: 1. It *was* a wave election in the popular vote, but it was blunted by gerrymandering: Here’s a tweet by Sam Wang: Even though Democrats won the popular vote by 9.2%, they only eked out 12 seats over a majority, and […]
Trump’s final pre-midterm job approval As promised, following up on yesterday’s post, here is Gallup’s final Trump job approval rating, as of the last weekend before Election Day: At very least, it sure looks like his fear-mongering about immigrants hasn’t helped, and it may have backfired. I will blog on the election results tomorrow night. […]