Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Housing remains recessionary. Why hasn’t one happened yet?

 – by New Deal democrat The post pandemic period has been an exception to many past relationships. This morning’s data on housing construction raises the issue as to whether housing is going to be included in those exceptions as well. That’s because the data has been classically recessionary for a number of months, and yet the […]

The muddied historical picture of PPI vs. CPI

 – by New Deal democrat Forecasting has always been hard, and moreso since the supply chain issues of 2021-22 made reading the interest rate signals from the long leading indicators muddled. But at least the short leading indicators were intact. But now we have the additional wrench in the works in the form of a mafia-style […]

The future of the American southwest

Years ago, I was invited to give a talk at Arizona State University in Tempe. My host told me to fly in early in the day, so he could take me walking in the desert. I’d never seen anything like it: mostly cactus and rocks. Seemed like Middle Earth. Since then, we’ve vacationed in Arizona […]

Leaving the Knife at Home

It is about time, citizens and Democrats confront Trump and push back on him and his administration. Look at these guys masked and wandering around normal citizens These are not criminals they are going to confront. These are citizens who might even be their neighbors. It is no different than the late sixties and early […]

Trump’s Economy Redux

My little post on the warnings by Paul Krugman and others that the US economy might be entering a period of stagflation, was prompted by my experience as young man who finished his education, started in his career and got married in the 1970’s when “stagflation” was the buzz word and politicians kept pointing fingers […]

Trump’s Economy

Paul Krugman among others has started to warn about “stagflation”, a term coined by Paul Samuelson in the 1970’s. Samuelson was a Nobel Prize winner who is known to a lot of college students for his book Economics: An Introductory Analysis. The term is most often associated with the Carter Administration although it was present […]

The Witnessing

For some years now, unbeknownst to some of us, we have been witness to a 100 year (and more) flood of historical events.  For some months now, we’ve been watching a slow-motion implosion of one of these events from these front row seats.  Slow, in our time —  a flash, in history’s eons.  Watching with […]

Applying Prof. Edward Leamer’s pre-recession progression paradigm to the present

 – by New Deal democrat Twenty years ago, Prof. Edward Leamer gave an important speech at the Fed’s Jackson Hole, WY, retreat called “Housing IS the Business Cycle.” In that speech he discussed the fact that, historically, private residential construction as a share of GDP on average peaked 7 quarters before the onset of recessions, followed […]

Back from the Dead and Very Much Alive . . . Detroit

I was living in Livingston County, Michigan where all the white folk go. Don’t get me wrong some of the other counties east of Livingston County were nice places too. We were in white suburbia and distant from the City of Detroit. Not so distant as to ignore the city decaying. We watched and whined […]

The Absence of Truth

Perhaps it is because our dear president takes on the image of a man who is borderline mad that the media fails to reveal what his actions represents. There are definite issues with his presidency. In the snap of a few executive orders the nation has lost years of progress. Some of these reversals when […]