July new home sales down nearly 30% from peak, as prices perhaps start to plateau Unlike yesterday’s existing home sales, today’s report on new home sales is much more economically significant. The reason I prefer single-family housing permits as a measure is that the sales data is extremely volatile, and heavily revised over the next […]
A note on existing home sales Existing home sales are the least noteworthy of the housing data, because of the very limited economic activity moving into or out of an existing home provokes compared with the construction, furnishing, and landscaping of a new home. But it’s worth a brief look, so let’s note this month’s […]
July industrial production (good news) and retail sales (bad news still being pretty good news) – by New Deal democrat This morning brought the July report for the King of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, as well as one of my favorite consumer side indicators, retail sales. Let’s take a look at each. Industrial sales increased strongly […]
Initial claims: simply, good news The bottom line for both initial and continued claims this week is simple: unadulterated, absolute good news. Initial jobless claims declined 29,000 to 348,000, 20,000 below their previous pandemic low. The 4 week average of claims declined by 19,000 to 377,750, 6,750 below its previous pandemic low of 384,500: Significant […]
July housing permits and starts: yellow flag for economy in 2022 Last month I noted that, from here on, the comparisons with 2020 in housing would become much more challenging. And so they have. While permits (gold in the graph below) did increase this month, their declining trend remains intact. Starts (blue), and more importantly, […]
Initial claims continue rangebound, while continuing claims continue slow decline, by New Deal Democrat Initial jobless claims declined 12,000 this week to 375,000, still 7,000 above their best pandemic levels of 368,000 set on June 26 and July 10. The 4 week average of claims increased by 1,750 to 396,250, 11,750 above its pandemic low […]
Coronavirus dashboard for August 16: some (relatively) “good” news, some bad news Recently I’ve speculated in a few places that Delta may be acting as a backfire-type firebreak against Lamdba, which has been getting a lot of press as potentially evading vaccines. Confirmation that this may in fact be the case comes from Dr. Eric Topol […]
Here is my inflation worry by New Deal democrat I want to follow up on a comment I made yesterday in connection with Wednesday’s consumer price report. It is certainly true that *inflation* is likely to be transitory. The 5.3% YoY inflation we’ve seen in June and July may certainly pass in the next few […]
July consumer inflation: the spike subsides somewhat, but we are close to the limit of “transitory” For the last two months, my theme has been that if the spike in inflation only lasted two or three months, it was not a big deal, but if the trend were to continue longer, it would begin to […]
Coronavirus dashboard for August 11: evidence that the Delta wave may be peaking in the earliest hit States My framework of analyzing the economy via leading, coincident, and lagging indicators continues to come in handy at looking at the course of the pandemic. At the beginning of June, I flagged that the number of cases […]