I recently reread Hayek’s most famous paper, The Use of Knowledge in Society, written in 1945. I hadn’t read it in many years. Page for page, TUKS is perhaps the most insightful economics paper ever written. Every undergraduate economics major should read it. I am not sure how many other papers written before 1960 […]
In December, the theme for new homes was “steady as she goes” in sales, price, and inventory trends – by New Deal democrat To reiterate my theme from the past few months, I’ve been looking at new and existing home sales more in tandem, with a rebalancing of the market in mind. For that to […]
JOLTS report for December shows mild improvement in most metrics, anticipates stabilization in wage increases – by New Deal democrat The monthly JOLTS reports give us a more granular look at the employment sector, but are delayed by one month vs. the jobs report. Like the jobs reports, most JOLTS series have shown deceleration for […]
Until 2021, I didn’t pay much attention to the housing market. At that point, we’d lived in the same house for 34 years. There was no Zillow when we bought that house, and we bought directly from the owner, without an agent. We ended up using an agent to buy our house in Rhode Island. […]
Per Heather Cox Richardson: “. . . Donald Trump, sparked a crisis last Friday when his White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced that he fully intended to go through with the trade war he had hyped on the campaign trail. Trump announced he would levy tariffs of 25% on most products from Mexico and […]
Many people in a survey cited inflation as the reason for financial difficulties than any other cause. Inflation reached a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022 and has yet to return to the Fed’s target of 2%. And as we all know, we were in amidst of a pandemic to which many economic entities took advantage […]
ISM manufacturing index in January the strongest since 2022 – 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 […]
World’s richest person making life difficult by cutting development assistance and aid Somewhere within all the issues Congress has to deal with, with this administration, there must be a day of reckoning coming. I can not imagine Republicans being too thrilled with the damage trump and his pissant are creating. In less than two years, […]
Personal income and spending for December: more “steady as she goes” but with late cycle characteristics -by New Deal Democrat The December personal income and spending report showed that for the huge consumption sector of the economy, “steady as she goes” continued, as both nominal and real personal income and spending rose again in December. […]
I haven’t written about Trump, tariffs, and trade wars because there is plenty of smart commentary out there, and because I really had (and have) no idea how the whole thing will play out. It seemed plausible to me that Trump might be dissuaded from launching a destructive full scale trade war, that he might […]