I would say Powell is taking a cautious approach. This comes with Trump taking office and Elon tinkering by edicts. The Federal Reserve carried out its third consecutive interest rate cut of the year Wednesday, as its monetary policy easing campaign shows signs of heading for a slowdown. Following its two-day meeting, the Federal Open […]

The US is one of a small handful of countries that has a statutory limit on the federal debt. It used to be routine for Congress to raise the debt ceiling, but recently, House Republicans have been using the debt ceiling to extract political concessions from Democratic Administrations. While raising the debt ceiling wasn’t in […]

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 […]

An American First. It’s the Law in WA: Accrued Holding Gains are Income – by Steve Roth originally posted at Wealth Economics Excluding these massive “economic flows” from income simply doesn’t make any sense, in basic accounting terms. Starting with the 2022 tax year, Washington State implemented a first-in-the-nation (7%) tax on accrued holding gains […]

November 2024 Labor Stats as you can read for yourself. I am interested in seeing how the BLS screwed up on earlier employment reports over a period of time. The graphs show part of that period of time. Everything looks like what it should be. I am not going to start a campaign on what […]

 – by New Deal democrat The very important construction data from the long leading housing sector was mixed this morning for November. The most leading datapoint, permits, increased 86,000 on an annualized basis to 1.505 million. Even more importantly, single family permits, which have the least noise and most signal of any of the datapoints, […]

Industrial production continues to slide  – by New Deal democrat Industrial production declined for the third month in a row in November, down -0.1%, while October was revised downward another -0.2%. Manufacturing production on the other hand increased 0.2% in November, but September and October were revised downward a combined -0.3%, so on net this was another […]

The author did not include graphs. I added graphs from the sources the author had included in their piece. A picture sometimes says more than words do. This is a well-documented and sourced commentary. It mostly says one thing . . . the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did little for Black Americans, minorities, […]

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 […]

Former Sen. Pat Toomey (R), represented the key state of Pennsylvania for 12 years in the Senate. He said he would not vote for former President Trump or Vice President Harris in the November 2024 election. (Psst, pre-November 2024 election commentary). I do not know if this person actually did not vote for either Trump or Kamala Harris. He […]