– by New Deal democrat I’ll keep today’s report on construction spending brief. The important part of this metric is residential construction spending, another proxy for housing. On a nominal basis, in March residential construction spending (red) declined -0.4%, while total construction spending (blue) declined -0.5%: These are hardly terrible declines. BUT, the price of […]
May 2 and Prof. Heather has an on-target piece on the direction Trump and his team are heading. Smoke and mirrors to distort reality and install a false version of reality as the truth. Create confusion to cover up. Lie and create false scenarios. Things seem to align when you wish to quell resistance and […]
Similar was a part of the Red scare of the fifties when McCarthyism was the political(?) flavor of the day. The idea was to instill hysteria promulgating over a perceived threat posed to the U.S. during the Cold War. Not so much the fear of communists today. What is occurring is a range of actions […]
My brother Mike is a retired mechanical engineer. He emailed me this morning and reminded me of a New Yorker article we had both read years ago and pointed me to a fascinating youtube video that retells the story. In a nutshell, the Citicorp building in Manhattan was a triumph of architectural innovation in its […]
– by New Deal democrat [Note: I’ll report separately on construction spending, also released this morning] Although manufacturing is of diminishing importance to the economy, (it was in deep contraction both in 2015-16 and again in 2022 without any recession), the ISM manufacturing index remains an important indicator with a 75+ year history of accurately describing […]
Lindsey Graham Asks Catholics to ‘Keep an Open Mind’ About Making Trump the Pope: ‘Has Many Upsides,’ Mediaite Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Catholics and the papal conclave to “keep an open mind” about the possibility of President Donald Trump becoming the next pope on Tuesday after Trump jokingly said he would “like to be pope” following Pope Francis’ death. After […]
– by New Deal democrat I suspect we will look back on this morning’s report on jobless claims as the first concrete sign of impending recession. Initial claims rose 18,000 to 241,000, the highest since February 22. The four week moving average rose 5,500 to 226,000. With the usual one week lag, continuing claims rose 83,000 […]
– by New Deal democrat Aside from the long leading indicators I discussed in that post, GDP is a look in the rear view mirror, because it includes January and February. Personal income and spending for March, although it is part of that GDP report, is therefore more current. Like the housing data we got earlier […]
A bit of recent history for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Each week we send more than 50,000 complaints about financial products and services to companies for response. If another agency would be better able to assist, we’ll send it to them and let you (the consumer) know. Most companies respond within 15 days. […]
Late and brief thoughts on Trump’s assault on the independence of the Fed. It’s old news.now, but one way in which Trump assaulted norms, shocked investors, then flinched when asset prices moved was his discussion of firing the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. To orthodox macroeconomists and also me this is an extreme heresy. […]