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

Again not recessionary, but more evidence the Fed should start to lower rates now.

Coincident real GDP metric is good, but leading indicators from the GDP report are not: is the Fed listening?  – by New Deal democrat Real GDP grew 0.7% in Q2, or a 2.8% annualized rate, a perfectly good number in line with the past three years: Probably even more importantly, the GDP deflator increased 0.6% […]

Homelessness is a Housing Problem

by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern Homelessness is a housing problem Somewhat of a writeup on homelessness using a review and the author’s introduction to the economic problem. Amazon published review of the book, “Homelessness Is a Housing Problem.” Authors Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern seek to explain the substantial regional variation in […]

Actually Understanding Corporate Share Buybacks

Who gets the money? Follow the assets. by Steve Roth Originally Published at Wealth Economics This post by Judd Legum at Popular Information (read and subscribe!) prompts me to revisit the issue of share buybacks. This passage in particular: It seems eye-popping. But is it? Even (especially?) finance and econ types don’t really understand buybacks from a […]

Comparing This Weeks Jobless claims to Last Summer

Jobless claims hold their ground against the most challenging comparisons of last summer  – by New Deal democrat This week completed the most challenging YoY comparisons with last summer. Recall that I suspect there may be some unresolved post-pandemic seasonality in these numbers, as this year’s increase starting in late spring has been close to […]

Suppostion? Economic performance is stronger when Democrats hold the White House

It appears people will argue the economic and social positives of the different political parties over periods of time. They probably are different. So, EPI has managed to chart the differences. What the first four charts do is detail the differences between the two parties over two different time periods. One time period staring in […]

Der Gefesselte Marx

by Tom Walker Econospeak Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading — part 2.1 Karl Marx’s preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy contains the best-known description of his theory of history. At some point contradiction between the relations of production and the forces of production become fetters on […]

7%+ mortgages weigh on new home sales, while prices continue slight downtrend, and inventory uptrend

 – by New Deal democrat Now that we have new as well as existing home sales, let’s take a little more extended look at the housing sector. Let me start by reiterating the big picture: mortgage rates lead sales, which in turn lead prices. Further, new home sales are the most leading of all housing […]

A Small Matter of Diversity and Inclusion

After going through a generation (baby-boomers) of supporting equal rights for “all” which includes women (later in the effort), Corporate America (in this case John Deere) is reversing its course. The stance is a “whatever will be, will be” and we will not make an effort to level the playing field. I was working on […]

Existing homes inventory and prices move towards normalization and Sales . . . ?

Existing home market inventory and prices move slowly towards normalization, while sales remain punk  – by New Deal democrat Since existing-homes sales are less important for economic purposes, and especially with new home sales being reported tomorrow morning, I will keep this brief. What we are looking for is rebalancing in the housing market. For […]