Dollar Stores Are Flashing a Warning Sign About Lower-Income Consumers. WSJ, Jinjoo Lee. Belt tightening from Customers at Dollar stores. Inflation has eased, wage growth has been decent and Americans on average still have more in savings than they used to pre-pandemic. Some might even say the economy has reached a much-vaunted “soft landing.” Low-income consumers, […]
Jobless claims: with a dash of seasonality salt, trending towards weakness – by New Deal democrat As expected, jobless claims declined from one week ago, as the delayed Thanksgiving week seasonality moved out of the numbers. Initial claims declined -22,000 to 220,000, while the four week moving average increased 1,250 to 225,500. With the typical […]
Real retail sales on the cusp of breaking out of their multi-year doldrums – by New Deal democrat Consumption leads employment, and as I reiterated yesterday real per capita retail sales has a history as a long leading indicator. Which means that retail sales for November, which rose 0.7% nominally, continues its recent strong string […]
– by New Deal democrat I haven’t “officially” updated my take on the long leading indicators – those that forecast a recession at least one year beforehand – in almost two years. That’s because the hurricane force tailwind of the supply-side deflationary unlinking of the global supply chain completely swamped everything else. So if I […]
I am sitting out here in Arizona watching the Semiconductor plants being built. The one we are closest to has been going on for two years now. I am going to guess it is near completion. TSMC Arizona’s first fab is on track to begin production leveraging 4nm technology in first half of 2025. Upcoming […]
I subscribe to The Atlantic and have done so for years. It would accompany me on long trips to Asia where I would fall asleep at one page, wake up later, and start reading where I left off. Spending 13 hours in a plane to Norita requires some type of brain stimulation. And then from […]
Can President Biden cancel student loans? Why not? Newly elected President Trump has every intention to pardon the October 6th insurrectionists. Most of the loans depicted in the graphs have been recast into new loans having the interest rolled into them. It created a misconception of these being new loans instead of older loans. This […]
Applications are “carefully reviewed” by a legal team to determine eligibility for debt cancellation, yep! What does continuous growing Student Loan Debt look like today? Federal Student Loan Portfolio by Age. The chart below only shows the last 4 years by Quarter. President Joe Biden has been attempting to grant relief to students. This is […]
November consumer inflation remains well-contained except for the two most lagging sectors of shelter and transportation services – by New Deal democrat Let me pick up where I left off yesterday discussing trends in consumer prices. One thing I have done every month for the last couple of years is to review all the categories […]
November jobs report: the expected monthly rebound masks deeper declining trends – by New Deal democrat To understand this month’s jobs report, let’s start with last month’s, where I wrote that “there were some signs of real weakness in this report that do not appear to be hurricane-related. But Hurricane Milton, as well as the […]