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

Stagnation Gone and US Productivity Growing

A quick and brief review of the economic trends and the third quarter. My only opinion on this recital being Supply Chain returning to a norm should be given more credit. Its manipulation was definitely one of the major influences on inflation. Beyond the standard metrics of industrial investment, it is also worth noting how […]

Real GDP for Q3 nicely positive, but long leading components mediocre to negative for the second quarter in a row

 – by New Deal democrat As usual, I’ll take a quick look at this morning’s headline GDP numbers for Q3 before passing on to my more important focus on the release’s leading components.  Real GDP grew at a 2.8% annualized rate in Q3. Just like Q2, this is a perfectly good number in line with the […]

Healthcare and the 2024 presidential election

Republicans have long objected to the ACA, and Trump tried several times to have it overturned; he’s claimed he’ll replace it with something better, but in eight years, he’s never come up with even a rudiment of a proposal. And here’s Speaker Johnson at a campaign stop yesterday: “No Obamacare?” an attendee asked Johnson, referring […]

JOLTS report for September shows continued deceleration in almost all metrics, now close to a cause for concern

 – by New Deal democrat The JOLTS survey parses the jobs market on a monthly basis more thoroughly than the headline employment numbers in the jobs report. For several years, my mantra for a lot of statistics has been “deceleration.” Well, in the case of the employment market, we have passed the point where deceleration […]

Repeat home sales accelerate slightly monthly, but continue to show YoY deceleration

– by New Deal democrat This morning’s repeat house price indexes from the FHFA and Case Shiller continued to show deceleration in this metric which is very important to home buyers. Specifically, on a seasonally adjusted basis, in the three month average through August, U.S. house prices according to both indexes rose 0.3%. This is a slight […]

Trump’s Proposals Could Bankrupt a Vital and Popular Program Within Six Years

A bit of a rewrite of an article. The Social Security scandal Trump doesn’t want you to know about by James Downie MSNBC Something else Donald Trump doesn’t want you to know about and how it will impact you. This type of plan always comes out later and then everyone says; “well if I had […]

A Proposal to Address the Housing Crisis

by Bill McBride Calculated Risk News Letter Economist Adam Ozimek and John Lettieri (CEO, Economic Innovation Group) have a new proposal to address the housing crisis in the United States:  How the next president can solve America’s housing crisis U.S. housing costs are out of control. The median home for sale was rarely more than four times […]

Second Quarter 2024, U.S Manufacturing Report

I chose this particular period to present as it depicts the impact of pandemic. It also shows the results of President Biden’s economic stimulus targeting manufacturing. And yes, you can also see the impact of the FED on the economy and their actions to normalize growth. It is a simple read. Yes, there is some […]

Elon Musk can’t do arithmetic

Kevin Drum over at jabberwocking.com watched the Trump spectacle over at Madison Square Garden so we didn’t have to. He zeros in on Elon Musk: “Elon used to be smart enough to do simple addition, but he thinks we can cut “at least” $2 trillion from federal spending—which amounted to $6.1 trillion last year, not […]