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

New Deal democrats Weekly Indicators for February 10 -14

– by New Deal democrat There’s no significant economic news today. Since I didn’t publish a link to my “Weekly Indicators” post up at Seeking Alpha over the weekend, here it is now. Left to its own devices, as I’ve written a number of times recently, the economy is in “steady as she goes” mode, with few […]

Flying the unfriendly skies

I’ve been a big fan of airline travel and have flown hundreds of times on commercial flights for business and pleasure over the past five decades. Not anymore: “The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal […]

U.S. Economic Confidence Ticks Down

I grabbed a few of the charts from this recent Gallup ECI report not so much to do a political viewpoint. Just watching the massive layoffs at the US Government which will certainly impact the nation’s Unemployment numbers. That layoff was bad enough when measured against the respect for people. It will have an economic […]

Homeowner Insurance Catastrophe Impact

The Perfect Storm in Home Insurance | Econofact The Issue: The Los Angeles fires, perhaps the costliest weather-related event in U.S. history, started just a few months after Hurricane Helene which ranked among the top 10 costliest hurricanes to batter the United States. And while hurricanes and wildfires command the most attention, severe convective storms (those traditional hailstorms […]

January retail sales: once or so a year, it lays an egg. This was one time

 – by New Deal democrat It’s that time of month again for my favorite indicator for the consumption side of the economy: retail sales have been tracked for over 75 years. When they are lower YoY, that has historically been a good (not perfect) indicator that a recession is near. That’s because that same 75-year […]

Jobless claims: more of “steady as she goes”

– by New Deal democrat Now that we are well past the Holidays, seasonality has settled down and so have the comparisons for jobless claims. Initial claims declined -7,000 to 213,000 last week, and the four-week average declined -1,000 to 216,000. With the usual one week delay, continued claims declined -36,000 to 1.850 million: On […]

Is there a self-enforcing budget deal with Trump?

Is there a self-enforcing budget deal with Trump? In yesterday’s column, Yglesias makes a critical observation:  “there is genuinely no point in negotiating a bipartisan appropriation bill if the president is going to ignore its terms. . . . the entire premise of a bipartisan spending deal is precisely that money will be spent on […]

Tariffs Driving Drug Prices Higher

Tariffs will drive prices higher on Rx drugs, our #1 import, GoozNews I was stunned this morning when I looked at the data. Drugs — the legal kind — are the U.S.’s single largest import category. The U.S. in the first 11 months of 2024 imported over $222 billion in pharmaceutical products, which includes both […]