My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Interest rates, along with gas prices, continue to be elevated, but consumers are continuing to spend their way right on through the adversity – at least, so far.
– by New Deal democrat Although manufacturing is far less important to the US economy than it was in the decades after World War II, it is still about 25% of the total weighting; and further, it is more vulnerable to shocks than the services portion of the economy. Which means, for forecasting purposes, it […]
Twenty years ago, Professor Edward Leamer gave an important presentation at the Fed’s Jackson Hole meeting entitled “Housing IS the Business Cycle.” The current environment is putting that hypothesis to a very severe test. Because by all accounts housing has deteriorated sufficiently that a recession should already have begun months ago. In fact, the current […]
– by New Deal democrat I’ll get to housing permits and starts later this morning. But first, let me take my regular look at initial and continuing jobless claims. As a reminder, I look at jobless claims because historically they have been a very good short leading indicator for the economy. And they continue to […]
– by New Deal democrat The drought of significant official economic data continues today, but this is a good time to update my forecast for the effect of the spike in gas prices on inflation, specifically for May. To reiterate, my back of the envelope calculation is to take the percent change in the price […]
– by New Deal democrat The bond market is sending the T—-p Administration, and the US government as a whole, a message. It believes the US is in a secular inflationary trend. This is not only because T—-p’s tariffs, and his boneheaded war with Iran, are inflationary, but also because last year’s Big Budget Bust-out […]
– by New Deal democrat In the past month or two, a number of times I have been asked by friends and neighbors why, if the economy feels so bad, does the stock market keep making new record highs? And is this a Boom or a Bubble? Here is what I have been telling them. There […]
New Deal Democrat: Weekly Indicators: A Negative Steepening of Bond Yields And (Maybe) Shipping Rates Summary: Unsurprisingly, the big move among the high frequency indicators in the past week was interest rates. There was also a secondary big move, which is also inflationary, and reflects the ongoing idiocy of the current Administration in Washington: international […]
– by New Deal democrat One of the things I used to harp on was that many forecasters make the mistake of simply taking an existing trend and projecting it forward. Often it is paired with the idea of “all things being equal,” i.e., that there won’t be countertrends in other sectors of the economy. […]
– by New Deal democrat Consumer spending is about 70% of the economy, and retail sales is our first wide measure of that spending. For the second month in a row, this morning’s update for April was unsurprisingly dominated by what happened at gas stations. Nominally, total retail sales rose 0.5% in April, But after […]