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

Why hurricane effects and funky seasonal adjustments will make tomorrow’s initial claims report particularly fun

– by New Deal democrat The drought in new economic data continues through today. We’ll make up for it all at once tomorrow with jobless claims, retail sales, and industrial production.  In the meantime, last week I noted that Hurricane Helene’s impact in Florida and North Carolina was a big part of the reason for […]

A simple Misunderstanding of How Tariffs Work

October 15, 2024 Letters from an American After Trump’s bizarre performance last night in Oaks, Pennsylvania, when he stopped taking questions and just swayed to his self-curated playlist for 39 minutes, his campaign this morning canceled a scheduled interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, according to co-host of the show Joe Kernen. The campaign did not, though, […]

Where housing affordability is worst and costs are highest in the U.S.

– By Jasmine Cui and Matthew Danbury NBC News Across the country, the prospect of home ownership is slipping out of reach for the ordinary buyer. The affordability gap — an estimate of the difference between an area’s median household income and how much income is necessary to afford payments on a median-priced home in […]

Household balance sheets are in good shape

– by New Deal democrat  One of my fundamentals-based systems for monitoring the economy is to look at the health of household balance sheets. Most recessions happen when consumers are under stress. If real wages are growing, if assets that can be leveraged or cashed in (mortgage payments, home equity, stocks) are increasing in value, if […]

2nd Look at Local Housing Markets in September

– by Bill McBride Calculated Risk NOTE: The tables for active listings, new listings and closed sales all include a comparison to September 2019 for each local market (some 2019 data is not available). This is the second look at several early reporting local markets in September. I’m tracking over 40 local housing markets in […]

No, immigrants aren’t taking all the jobs

A common right-wing grievance is that undocumented (“illegal”) immigrants are taking all the jobs. In particular, that they’re stealing jobs from native-born Americans. What’s the evidence? If it were true that immigrants were stealing jobs from native born Americans, then if you plotted labor force participation by native- and foreign-born over time, they would have […]

What Happens When Corporate Places Greater Emphasis on Stock Buybacks Rather than Quality?

If you did not figure out where I am going by just reading the title, then I will explain a bit. Stock buybacks do not trump Quality. It is that simple. When you sacrifice Labor so as to have funding to buy back stocks, you may have picked the wrong person to toss. The person […]

Healthcare Premiums Soaring Even as Inflation Eases

If we were to look at the costs of healthcare insurance for families and businesses, it has not remained the same percentage-wise for employers or employees. My initial sentence is a backwards way of saying costs are increasing faster than gains in income for either. Nothing has changed here and the foes to single payer […]

Why electric cars of the future might be smaller, safer, and fewer

by Lloyd Alter Carbon Upfront There is a sense of humor here being shown by Lloyd. He is asking Elon Musk to build differently than what he would do if planned by the market. Granted electric vehicles have been a part of what Tesla offers. Lloyd is asking Elon to go a step farther and […]

Trends in Housing Affordability: Who Can Currently Afford to Buy a Home?

– Nadia Evangelou National Association of Realtors A good read explaining why things slowed down. Good introduction of why housing market fell apart since 2020. Much was due to the Fed Rate which was significantly higher than it normally was. People did not have the income to support a higher payment caused by a higher […]