– by New Deal democrat Industrial production is much less central to the US economic picture than it was before the “China shock,” since so much production moved overseas, meaning US consumers buy much more imported goods than they used to. Still it is an important if diminished coincident indicator. This morning’s report for June was […]

 – by New Deal democrat Much of the commentary on yesterday’s CPI report suggested that the tariff impacts were apparent. My own analysis was more cautious. That’s simply because we don’t know for sure which items were affected by tariffs, and at this point referring to, e.g., appliances that showed relatively large monthly increases in prices […]

 – by New Deal democrat We are at somewhat of an inflection point as to consumer inflation. On the one hand, the post-pandemic inflationary effects continue to fade. But on the other, we are waiting for the effects of Tariff-palooza!  In June the waning post-pandemic effects continued to dominate, as the only items still rising […]

 – by New Deal democrat The post-jobs report data drought finally ends tomorrow. Today, let me take the opportunity to update some important trends that have been affected or caused by the T—-p Administration’s “policies.”  All graphs below showing absolute values have been normed to a value of 100 as of Election Day last November. […]

– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Despite the warning signs in some of the recent monthly data that I’ve highlighted in the past several weeks, the high frequency data this past week indicated smooth sailing, at least for now. Some of that is likely due to the 4th of […]

 – by New Deal democrat Our data drought won’t end until next Tuesday. In the meantime, let me follow up on a theme from my analysis of the economic data from last week. To wit: there are several metrics that I have already stated are worth a “recession watch;” namely, housing units under construction (down almost […]

 – by New Deal democrat We finally have some new data this week – the usual, jobless claims. Initial claims declined -5,000 for the week, while the four week moving average declined 5,750. With the usual one week delay, continuing claims, on the other hand, rose 10,000 to a new 4.5+ year high of 1.965 […]

 – by New Deal democrat During this week’s drought of new economic data, let’s continue taking a look at some important information from last Friday’s employment report. In every report, I break down my analysis first and foremost by looking at the leading indicators contained within the data. This is almost entirely confined to the goods-producing […]

Two important danger signals in the June employment report  – by New Deal democrat This is Ben Casellman, Chief Economic Correspondent for The NY Times’s take on last Friday’s employment report: I beg to differ. As I wrote Friday, underneath the headlines, this was a barely positive report – with some significant negatives. Let me […]

– by New Deal democrat Last month the new orders components of the economically weighted ISM manufacturing and services indexes warranted the hoisting of a yellow flag “Recession Watch.”  This month that continued. To recap, because manufacturing is much less important to the economy than in the decades before the Millennium, the economically weighted average of the […]