– by New Deal democrat Last month I concluded: “This was a very weak report, although not negative. If there were not distortions from the front-running of tariffs earlier this year, it would come very close to meriting a ‘recession watch.’  But by next month, the payback from this previous front-running should have largely abated. If […]

– by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims have been relatively subdued for the past month. Some have suggested that this is a byproduct of the large immigrant deportations which have recently taken place. Last week I noted that, “comparing the SA and NSA readings in the past several months suggests that [unresolved seasonality] has affected […]

– by New Deal democrat In this month’s report on new home sales for July, the most important news was at the tail end, which I’ll get to last. As per my usual intro, while new home sales are the most leading measure of the housing market, they are very noisy and heavily revised – which […]

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. There were no big changes this week, but what continues to stick out in the data as far as I am concerned is just how strong consumer spending continues to be: weekly retail spending was up nearly 6% YoY, and restaurant reservations – […]

  – by New Deal democrat The housing market, for all of its economic importance, tends to move as slow as molasses. This is especially true as to prices, where sellers are loathe to realize a loss, even when compared to hypothetical gains they could have had by selling earlier. The pandemic, of course, through […]

AB: This is an excellent NDd recital on a not so good jobless claim report. Employment is not improving and as NDd states it appears to be remaining the same. The tariff game Tr__p is playing is not helping the economy and is just another burden in cost which we will all pay. This is […]

 – by New Deal democrat Let’s take a look at the “real” purchasing power of average working and middle class Americans. The July jobs report showed that average hourly earnings for nonsupervisory workers rose a little under 0.3% (blue in the graph below). Consumer inflation (red) rose 0.2%, so “real” average hourly earnings rose 0.1%. […]

 – by New Deal democrat The post pandemic period has been an exception to many past relationships. This morning’s data on housing construction raises the issue as to whether housing is going to be included in those exceptions as well. That’s because the data has been classically recessionary for a number of months, and yet the […]

 – by New Deal democrat Forecasting has always been hard, and moreso since the supply chain issues of 2021-22 made reading the interest rate signals from the long leading indicators muddled. But at least the short leading indicators were intact. But now we have the additional wrench in the works in the form of a mafia-style […]

Weekly Indicators for August 11 – 15 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. This week I quantified the difference between commodity prices in the US$ vs. a basket of all other currencies. Perhaps unsurprisingly,  the upward pressure on commodity prices appears to be all, or almost […]