Jobless claims: seasonality and neutrality continue – by New Deal democrat The week’s first meaningful data is jobless claims. These have been trending higher YoY, but with lots of seasonal noise. And that trend continued this week. Initial claims increased 6,000 to 223,000. The four-week moving average (especially more important right now to filter out […]
– by New Deal democrat I don’t normally discuss movements in the stock and bond markets, but occasionally there are important paradigm shifts that can tell us a lot about the economy, and the last few months have been one of those times. The Federal Reserve began to cut interest rates on September 18th. What […]
– by New Deal democrat There is no significant economic news until Thursday. In the meantime, today and tomorrow let me discuss a couple of issues at the intersection of economics and politics. The 2024 Presidential election was one of the closest popular vote margin for the winning candidate, at 1.5%, since Richard Nixon’s 0.7% […]
Joe Biden – by New Deal democrat Over 5 years ago, I looked at the 500-year history of the Roman Republic. In my penultimate discussion of its downfall, I wrote: “By 78 BC the Republic was dead on its feet. Virtually all of its norms of office-holding had been swept away. Political mobs using violence to get […]
– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. The big news this week was the continued surge in commodity prices, normally a sign of tight demand (but sometimes a shortage of supply, that does not seem to be the case now); and also higher interest rates showing up in corporate […]
Residential housing construction gives *very* mixed signals in December; recessionary red flag continues – by New Deal democrat The most lading components of the long leading housing sector rose in this morning’s report for December, while the most important “hard” economic datapoint continued its decline into recession territory. First let’s compare the most leading datapoint, […]
Typically, when I post New Deal Democrat; I will have the link to the post at the end of his economic commentaries. I also include a link to a previous commentary of his of the same topic. New Deal democrat follows the ups, downs, and stagnation of his topics. It is more work. However. I […]
– by New Deal democrat Since I posted earlier about why I follow jobless claims so closely, let me briefly restate why I pay a lot of attention to real retail sales. Retail sales have been tracked for over 75 years. When they are lower YoY, that has historically been a good (not perfect) indicator […]
A Refresher on Why I pay so much attention to them . . . – by New Deal democrat This might be a good time to reiterate why I post each week on jobless claims, and what my system is. Initial jobless claims in particular are a recognized leading indicator. In fact, they are one […]
– by New Deal democrat December consumer prices indicate that we are leaving the immediate post-covid era and seeing a rebalancing of sectors, as sectors that declined sharply in the past several years rebound. As in November, the only two categories of “hot” numbers showing price increases of 4.0% a year or more are two […]