– by New Deal democrat The CPI for July continued all of the trends I have been writing about for the past year or more:  – Headline and core CPI continue to slowly decelerate.   – energy inflation is non-existent  – shelter inflation remains very elevated but continues to declerate, following house prices.  – all prices […]

 – by New Deal democrat In the paradigm popularized by Prof. Edward Leamer 20 years ago, motor vehicle sales are the 2nd domino to fall, after housing, in the procession of sectors that turn down prior to recessions. I haven’t updated this in a while, so let’s take a look. As an initial matter, the […]

Producer prices remain tame  – by New Deal democrat Producer prices for final demand (blue) rose 0.1% in July, while upstream raw commodity prices (red) rose 0.7%, close to their highest monthly increases in the past two years: In the larger pre-pandemic scheme of things, the one month rise in commodity prices is not a […]

Weekly Indicators for August 5 – 9 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up, a day later than usual, at Seeking Alpha. While there was some excitement at the racetrack Monday as stocks just missed making a new 3 month low by a hair, the more exciting news by […]

– by New Deal democrat The final data point from last week that I wanted to catch up on was construction spending, and especially residential construction and spending. As reported last week, in June total nominal spending declined -0.3% in June, but is higher 6.2% YoY. The more leading residential sector also showed a -0.4% […]

 – by New Deal democrat Officially reported initial jobless claims declined -17,000 to 233,000 last week. The four-week moving average rose 750 to 240,750. With the typical one-week delay, continuing claims rose 6,000 to 1.875 million, the highest number since November 17, 2021: On the more important YoY basis, initial claims were down -9.7%, while […]

– by New Deal democrat Continuing my catching up this week, let’s take a look in some further detail about why I didn’t think Friday’s jobs report portended recession – at least, not yet. As I always point out, the jobs report does contain some leading numbers. These are generally employment in more cyclical industries […]

Credit conditions in Q2 improved, and are typical of an economy having come *out* of a recession, not going in to one  – by New Deal democrat The Senior Loan Officer Survey, the premier quarterly measure of the loose- or tight-ness of bank lending, was published yesterday for Q2. And since lending conditions are a […]

Economically weighted ISM indexes show (and forecast) an economy still – barely – in expansion  – by New Deal democrat As I was traveling last week, I did not write about several data series that I normally update. I plan on taking care of that this week. There’s also a little excitement in the markets […]

July jobs report: Establishment survey weak (but still positive), Household survey (even more) recessionary  – by New Deal democrat In the past few months, my focus has been on whether jobs gains are most consistent with a “soft landing,” i.e., no further deterioration, or whether deceleration is ongoing. In the last several months I have also […]