Producer price inflation: it’s a gas! I normally do not pay much attention to producer prices, but with the huge increase in spending earlier this year and the ensuing supply bottlenecks taking center stage, the course of inflation has emerged as the most pressing economic issue. To recap briefly, with the second round of pandemic […]
‘Brutus,’ the anti-Federalist to presciently foresaw the Imperial Supreme Court As you may recall, for the past several years I have done a great deal of historical reading about Republics; how they were structured, what were their strengths and weaknesses, whether they were able to last a long time, and whether they were consistent […]
October jobs report: a very strong report putting to rest questions about the strength of the expansion In the light of the last two month’s relatively “poor” jobs readings, an important question was what was going to happen with revisions. As we will see below, they really delivered! – big positive revisions to both of […]
Layoffs, wages, and labor costs: three measures of the labor Boom, New Deal democrat Initial claims declined another 14,000 this week to 269,000, and the 4 week average declined 15,000 to 284,750, both new pandemic lows: For the past 50 years, initial claims have only been at these levels briefly at the peak of the […]
Three reasons for the decline in Biden’s (and Democrats’) popularity Dan Guild follows presidential approval closely and uses it to model election outcomes, including State level as well as Congressional and Senate races. He’s been very consistent, and very good. For the past several months, his hair has been on fire about a real decline […]
(Dan here…from Wednesday, Nov.3) About last night I was going to write about motor vehicle sales (not good), but FRED is down for maintenance. I might put something up later whenever the site comes back online. In the meantime, because a few people have asked me offline what I make of last nights results (at […]
Coronavirus dashboard for November 2: the winter wave has begun The Delta decline is probably over. Nationwide US cases are up 4000/day from one week ago. The Northeast and South census regions still show a decline, but West and Midwest regions show increases: One week ago only 3 States were in the “increasing” category. Now […]
September personal income and spending: positive, but consumers’ “cushion” of pandemic assistance savings is now exhausted Real personal income and spending held up well throughout the pandemic, due to a vigorous government response. This morning these were reported for the first month after the expiration of the last such assistance. In nominal terms, personal income declined […]
Coronavirus dashboard for October 27: whither the winter wave, and the trajectory of endemic COVID Well, we got some definite good news yesterday in the FDA approval of vaccines for children ages 5-11. Probably about 1/2 of the 8.5 million children in this age group will be vaccinated by the middle of winter.In the meantime, […]
New home sales confirm upturn in housing, while FHFA and Case Shiller suggest increase in house prices is slowing This morning we got three reports on housing sales and prices. Let’s start with the sales data. New home sales, while very noisy and heavily revised, tend to lead all of the other housing indicators, even […]