– by New Deal democrat In the past number of months, I have been looking for a rebalancing of new vs. existing home sales. The sharp increase in mortgage rates beginning in 2022 locked many existing homeowners into their houses, since they could not afford the concomitant increase in mortgage payments that would accrue from […]

– by New Deal democrat One of the well-established long leading indicators is corporate profits. Typically they peak a year or more before the onset of a recession. And the reason makes sense: if there is profit pressure that lasts longer than a single quarter, i.e., it looks like it may be forming a trend, […]

– by New Deal democrat This week is another light one for economic data, so let me discuss a couple of points explaining why I am cautious, but not DOOOMing. Basically, because there are a lot of asterisks. Today let me follow up on initial jobless claims. The typical best way to look at these is […]

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. As per the analysis of monthly data that I wrote about this week, hurricane season continued to complicate the high frequency data as well. With that very big caveat, the underlying tone remained positive. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring […]

– by New Deal democrat Much of the data that is being released, like yesterday’s jobless claims data, has to be viewed with an asterisk after it, because of hurricane disruptions. As an addendum to yesterday’s industrial production report, I failed to mention that the BEA that “the effects of two hurricanes subtracted an estimated 0.3 […]

– by New Deal democrat A periodic reminder, real retail sales is one of my favorite economic indicators, because it tells us so much about the state of the consumer, and since consumption leads employment, it is a short leading indicator for that as well. In September retail sales in August rose 0.4% on a […]

 – by New Deal democrat Before I get to the (relatively) good news in retail sales, let’s take a look at the bad news from industrial production. On a monthly basis, production declined -0.3%. Manufacturing declined -0.4%. There were also downward revisions to last month. Both of these continue to slowly fade from their 2022 […]

– by New Deal democrat The drought in new economic data continues through today. We’ll make up for it all at once tomorrow with jobless claims, retail sales, and industrial production.  In the meantime, last week I noted that Hurricane Helene’s impact in Florida and North Carolina was a big part of the reason for […]

– by New Deal democrat  One of my fundamentals-based systems for monitoring the economy is to look at the health of household balance sheets. Most recessions happen when consumers are under stress. If real wages are growing, if assets that can be leveraged or cashed in (mortgage payments, home equity, stocks) are increasing in value, if […]

For Indigenous Persons Day: a review of “A Brave and Cunning Prince” by James Horn  – by New Deal democrat Recently I read the above entitled book, and found it fascinating. Below are excerpts from an online book review, to which I have added further detail in brackets. I highly recommend it: “In the mid-sixteenth […]