– by New Deal democrat I’m on the road today, and won’t have time to update anything until tonight. So here is what to look for in initial and continuing jobless claims. Remember that the most important figure for forecasting purposes is the YoY% change. One year ago, initial claims came in at 221,000, the […]
New home sales: despite the noisy sharp increase in August, the last pre-recession metrics are firmly negative – by New Deal democrat Have I mentioned before that new home sales, while perhaps the most leading of all the housing data, suffer from being very noisy and heavily revised? Yes, I think I have, just about […]
– by New Deal democrat In addition to my system of long and short leading indicators, and the weekly high frequency data, the third system I use to mark to market my views of the economy is what i call “the consumer nowcast.” Introduction I have various systems for tracking the economy — including high-frequency weekly […]
– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Along with the continuing resilience of consumer spending, which I wrote about yesterday, the other surprise in the data has been the strong rebound in manufacturing indexes in the past 45 days, as evidenced by several of the regional Fed situation reports […]
– by New Deal democrat One of this things that has puzzled me for the last few months is why consumer spending has remained so strong in the face of so many headwinds in the economy, some from horrible policy coming out of Washington, some embedded in the long leading and short leading sectors. There is […]
– by New Deal democrat We are in the part of the year when, post-Covid, likely residual seasonality has resulted in a declining trend in new jobless claims. Not this year. On a week over week basis, initial jobless claims did decline -33,000 from last week’s outlier 264,000 to 231,000, and the four week averaged declined […]
– by New Deal democrat A puzzling relationship this year has been that the housing data has been classically recessionary for a number of months, and yet the economy has not rolled over. And this morning’s dismal report on housing construction was even more recessionary. Let’s start with the most dismal number of all: permits […]
– by New Deal democrat So much is imported that industrial production is much less central to the US economic picture than it was before the “China shock,” but it remains an important if diminished economic indicator. It has been trending generally sideways this year, and that trend continued in August. Headline industrial production (blue in […]
– by New Deal democrat Retail sales is the first of two very important indicators we got this morning. Per yesterday, with employment growth “dead in the water” since April, consumer spending – which leads future employment – is the single most crucial element of a turning point. It really is incredible how it takes a […]
tomorrow we will find out about production and sales – by New Deal democrat With no news today, let’s take a look at why two releases tomorrow are especially important. Let me begin with employment, which is “dead in the water.” I’ve written before about how manufacturing and construction employment, and now the entire leading sector […]