– by New Deal democrat The housing market has historically been led by mortgage rates. And since those have been relatively rangebound for most of the past 2.5 years in the 6%-7% range, housing permits and starts have similarly followed. This morning those trends continued. Total permits (dark blue in the graph below) increased 23,000 on […]

 – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims continued to be well-behaved last week. Per this morning’s report, they declined -9.000 to 215,000, while the four week moving average declined -2,500 to 220,750. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims increased 41,000 to 1.885 million – which, despite the big weekly increase, is right in […]

 – by New Deal democrat The former King of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, has faded ever since the “China shock” at the beginning of the Millennium. Downturns in production almost always coincided with the onset of recessions beforehand. Since then, there have been several big downturns, in 2015-16, 2019, and a smaller one in 2023-24, […]

 – by New Deal democrat Normally real retail sales is one of the indicators I treat as most important, because it tells us so much about consumer behavior, which is not only 70% of the economy, but also has a lengthy track record for leading both employment and the coincident indicators for recession. Not this […]

– by New Deal democrat Over the weekend, in my high frequency “Weekly Indicators” post, I wrote that in the past month, the bulk of the short leading indicators had turned from being positive to negative. Which of course raises the question, should I go on recession watch? To help resolve that, I took a […]

 – by New Deal democrat Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has called T—-p’s tariffs “an act of warfare against the entire world.” Perhaps it is not surprising that in the past week, the entire world has responded. Among other things,  per Eric Michael Garcia, “China has suspended exports of a wide range of critical minerals and […]

– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. In this time of exogenous shock to the economy caused by the whims of one man, it is especially important to keep laser-focused on the hard data. And the first hard data that will tell you what is happening is the high […]

 – by New Deal democrat  With yesterday’s CPI report, we can update two important measures of ordinary American workers’ well-being, that also serve as short leading indicators: real average hourly earnings and real aggregate nonsupervisory payrolls.  There have been two months since the pandemic lockdowns five years ago, including last June, where there were very slight […]

Jobless claims continue to reflect slowly expanding economy  – by New Deal democrat I dealt with the March CPI report yesterday; I will update jobless claims today. On a weekly basis, initial claims rose 4,000 to 223,000. The four week moving average also was at 223,000, unchanged from last week. And with the typical one week […]

This is the report we have been waiting for . . .  – by New Deal democrat In March, with the exception of the usual problem child of shelter, almost every other component of consumer prices was tame – except for meat and eggs. And even shelter continued to decelerate. If Jerome Powell hadn’t tied […]