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

Open Thread July 14, 2023 Labor Costs are an Issue?

Powell: “Labor costs are really the biggest factor in most parts of that sector (service),” Powell said. “We need to see a better alignment of supply and demand in the labor market and see some more softening in labor market conditions so that inflationary pressures in that sector can also begin to subside.” Open Thread […]

Initial claims move closer to red flag recession warning

Initial claims move closer to red flag recession warning  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims declined -12,000 last week to 237,000. The four week average declined -6,750 to 246,750. With a one week delay, continuing claims increased 11,000 to 1,729,000: More importantly for forecasting purposes, the YoY% increases were 7.2% for the weekly […]

June inflation almost non-existent except for the fictitious measures of shelter

June inflation almost non-existent except for the fictitious measures of shelter  – by New Deal democrat  The message of this morning’s consumer inflation report was the same for almost everything except for the fictitious measures of shelter: sharp deceleration everywhere. Let’s take a look: Headline CPI up 0.2% m/m and 3.1% YoY (lowest since March […]

Scenes from the employment report: important leading and coincident indicators of recession

Another well defined report by NDd about the possibility of recessions. Everything points in such a direction. If the Fed keeps raising its rate, it is almost a foregone conclusion. One a recession starts there is no backing away from it (as if we could). Scenes from the employment report: important leading and coincident indicators […]

Scenes from the June employment report: consumption leads employment, goods vs. services edition

Scenes from the June employment report: consumption leads employment, goods vs. services edition  – by New Deal democrat No big new economic news today, so let’s take a more in-depth look at some of the information from Friday’s employment report. Today I’m going to focus on the division between goods and services. As I’ve written […]

Arguments from authority

In humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgment are unlinked. There are many such examples; viz: • Kary Mullis, who won for co-inventing the technique behind PCR testing, went on to deny that HIV causes AIDS, helping to sway South African president Thabo Mbeki into rejecting antiretroviral therapy, costing hundreds of thousands of […]

New Deal democrats Weekly Indicators for July 3 – 7

Weekly Indicators for July 3 – 7 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. A real-time daily update of inflation (based on millions of prices posted at internet sales sites among other things) has become available, and has been added to the array of coincident indicators. The […]

Open Thread July 9, 2023 US Debt

Differences between Japan and the US Debt. Explain how Japan can manage twice the debt/GDP with no problems but the US is headed to a crisis. Or is the issue really about unnecessary deficit spending due to tax breaks skewed to upper income brackets? Open Thread July 2, 2023 Partisan SCOTUS, Angry Bear, angry bear blog

June jobs report: deceleration continues, with weakest private jobs sector growth since 2020

June jobs report: deceleration continues, with weakest private jobs sector growth since 2020  – by New Deal democrat My focus remains on whether jobs growth continues to decelerate, and whether the leading indicators, particularly manufacturing and construction jobs, as well as the unemployment rate (which leads going into recessions) have meaningfully deteriorated. In May the […]