As a subscriber to xpostfactoid, I have access to some excellent commentary by Andrew Spung. This is not a person I would argue with about the ACA, Medicare or Medicaid, etc. Anyway, the WSJ has an article touting Medicaid cuts which did catch his attention and is the basis for his commentary. The link is […]
Jobless claims decline back into neutral territory – by New Deal democrat After last week’s big jump, this week initial jobless claims declined -21,000 to 221,000. The four-week moving average increased 250 to 224,250. With the typical one-week delay, continuing claims rose 42,000 to 1.897 million: On the more important YoY basis for forecasting purposes, […]
Economically weighted ISM indexes for February indicate continued slow growth – by New Deal democrat Because manufacturing is now of much less importance to the economy than in the decades before the Millennium, I now use a weighted average of the ISM services index (75%) as well as manufacturing (25%) as the primary forecasting tool. […]
Economist Claudia Sahm believes there is little or an unlikely chance of a recession due to “DOGE” efforts. The magnitude of the layoffs, let-goes, retirements, etc. are not enough to bring on a recession. After reading this I am beginning to think, this is more of a scare tactic by Musk and Trump (he would […]
The threats of tariffs and trade wars by Trump appears to have had an impact on the US economy. Moreso than the countries he has been threatening. If they call his bluff, the US population will pay for his malfeasance. Maybe this is what Trump wanted? As reported at Quartz “The stock market’s Trump bump […]
– by New Deal democrat There’s no important economic data today, so this is a good time to write about several important developments in the stock and bond markets. First of all, as many of you may already know, a portion of the US Treasury yield curve, between the 10 year and 3 month Treasuries, re-inverted […]
According to Yahoo Finance, the stock market has wiped out all the gains since Trump’s inauguration. Of course, the stock market isn’t the economy. What does the Atlanta fed project for GDP growth? Not good. Unless you’re Vladimir Putin. Or work for him. https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
In 2023, approximately one-fifth of the workforce was foreign-born. Of the 160.2 million people in the US workforce, and again about 29.7 million were immigrants. This is an increase from 2010 when the immigrant portions was an approximate 15.6% of the workforce. Immigrants can be employed across different industries. However, there is concentrations of immigrants […]
– by New Deal democrat 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 that sector and forecasting it over the short term. Any […]
– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Last week I wrote that exogenous factors – like political decisions – could have nearly simultaneous effects across all timeframes of indicators. In other words, the long and short leading indicators as well as the coincident indicators, could all react at the […]