New home sales suggest housing bottom is in New home sales are extremely volatile, and extremely revised, but they do have the advantage of probably being the single most leading housing statistic, ahead of permits and starts. So it is noteworthy that new home sales for March rose to 692,000, below only one month in […]
Commercial and industrial loans: another sign of a slowdown? There are lots of cross-currents in the economy right now. At the absolute tip of the spear is the decline in interest rates since November, which has led to an improvement in some of the housing market metrics. In the shorter-term outlook, a simple quick-and-dirty metric […]
How increasing local oligopolization has distorted the housing market Earlier this week new home sales for March were reported, soaring to a new expansion high bar one month (November 2017). Something else that a few other writers picked up on: the median *prices* for new homes fell to a level not seen in the past […]
Prisoners of Overwork: A Dilemma The New York Times has an illuminating article today summarizing recent research on the gender effects of mandatory overwork in professional jobs. Lawyers, people in finance and other client-centered occupations are increasingly required to be available round-the-clock, with 50-60 or more hours of work per week the norm. Among other costs, the […]
Free Speech, Safety and the Triumph of Neoliberalism I’m reading another article about debates over free speech on campus, this time at Williams College, an elite school in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts. A faculty petition asks to formalize and tighten the college’s policy on free speech by adopting the Chicago Principles, which state that “concerns about […]
The scary headlines of the past few days have been well-discussed below by Dale Coberly and Barkley Rosser. Data, however, is only as good as its assumptions, and the overall trend is well worth a glance. (Note: I took the 2013-2017 data from BC professor (and director of their Center for Retirement Research) Alicia H. […]
(Dan here…Social Security is an issue that seems to generate a lot of firm beliefs and passion, as witness recent threads. It is rare that people refer to actuary material. On the other sides of the issue are people like Andrew Biggs, who is knowledgeable and smart in his arguments. I am posting this as […]
Media Continues VSP Story On Social Security Here we go again. We have arrived at the time for the release of the annual Social Security Administration (SSA) report. It got the usual headlines across the media, that the SSA will “run out of money” in 2034. Most of the stories played it all scary, although […]
by Dale Coberly SOCIAL SECURITY TRUSTEES REPORT OUT TODAYor was it yesterday? Ho Hum. The 2019 Social Security Trustees Report was released yesterday. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published its usual half truths (also known as “lies”):. “We are all going to die!” The Reporters and Columnists Who Cover Them ™ reported the […]
YoY Industrial production and structural changes to the US economy since 1980 No big economic releases today, so let me follow up further with a few long-term comments on industrial production. This series goes back 100 years to the beginning of 1919. Since that time it has turned negative YoY 25 times: Of those 25 […]