Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Repeat home sales through March confirm continued deceleration of price increases

 – by New Deal democrat Last week the existing home sales report showed continued deceleration in YoY price increases to 1.8%, indicative of the ongoing rebalancing of the housing market. This morning’s repeat home sales reports from the FHFA and S&P Case Shiller confirmed that deceleration and ongoing rebalancing. On a seasonally adjusted basis, in […]

New Deal democrats Weekly Indicators May 19 – 23

Weekly Indicators for May 19 – 23 at Seeking Alpha (plus bonus charts)  – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. The effects of Tariff-paloooza! are like a slowly building tsunami. The tide rolled out, but now far out at sea there is a horizon to horizon white wall of foam. […]

Memorial Day 2025: “that these dead shall not have died in vain”

by New Deal democrat From Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “… [O]ur fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can […]

New home sales make 3 year high as price pressures for existing homes abate and inventory increases

  – by New Deal democrat Since new and existing home sales were released just one day apart, I figured I would report on both of them together; in particular because for well over a year I have been looking for, and tracking, the rebalancing of this market, where a lack of inventory of existing homes […]

The Bond Market is Not Amused: on the importance of Moody’s debt downgrade and the GOP budget bill

 – by New Deal democrat Today let me address the GOP bust-out budget bill, and how that plays into Moody’s downgrade of US debt last week. And the bottom line is that, it is bad. The rubber is starting to hit the road. Let me start out with the below graph from the CBO of the […]

Jobless claims: more of the same old, same old

 – by New Deal democrat The story continues to be “same old, same old” with unemployment claims. Initial claims declined -2,000 last week to 227,000. The four week moving average rose 1,000 to 231,500. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims rose 36,000 to 1.903 million: The YoY story continues to be the same as […]

Have any impacts from Tariff-palooza! shown up in hard data yet?

 – by New Deal democrat A few days ago, Prof. Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser posted the below graphs comparing the time that hard vs. soft data reacted to economic shocks: As you know, I have been looking at hard “high frequency” data to see if any of the effects of Tariff-palooza! have shown up yet. And […]

In Q1, bank conditions for loans appear to have darkened

 – by New Deal democrat Until Thursday we are once again in a data drought this week. In the meantime, there are a few points I want to address, including the very important Moody’s downgrade of US debt. But there was one important piece of data that came out last week that I didn’t discuss yet: […]

Housing permits and starts still rangebound, but with units under construction down almost -20%, is the last shoe finally dropping?

 – by New Deal democrat In April total permits (dark blue in the graph below) declined -69,000 on an annualized basis to 1.412 million, while the less volatile single family permits (red, right scale) number declined -50,000 to 922,000. The slightly lagging and much more volatile starts number (gray, narrow) rose 22,000 to 1.361 million annualized: […]

Industrial and manufacturing production suggest front-running production has peaked

– by New Deal democrat The final datapoint for today is industrial production, including its important manufacturing component.  Last month I wrote that “I suspect the big increases in February and March in manufacturing, like this morning’s retail sales numbers, were about front-running T—-p’s tariffs. Which means that like retail sales, production might have been […]