by New Deal democrat What does a “Recession Watch” mean? On Wednesday I went on “Recession Watch” beginning Q4 of this year. Yesterday I explained what that means in detail over at Seeking Alpha. So, what happens after this? If the weakness persists and spreads to the short leading indicators, the “watch” turns into a.warning. If […]
December JOLTS report: mixed but with strong positive revisions The JOLTS report on labor is noteworthy and helpful because it breaks down the jobs market into a more granular look at hiring, firing, and voluntary quits. Its drawback is that the data only goes back less than 20 years, so from the point of view […]
This is an exiting day. I disagree with something Paul Krugman wrote. In 2017, private insurance paid about a third of America’s medical bills — $1.2 trillion, or 6 percent of GDP. Having the government pay those bills directly, without a revenue offset, would therefore be a spending increase — a fiscal stimulus — of […]
It Is Monday And Usual Suspect Bashes Social Security That would be Robert J. Samuelson at the Washington Post, and, yes, he has done it yet again, actually for the first time in a while. Dean Baker has already done a good job of cutting him up over on CEPR, but I can’t help piling […]
A decelerating Staffing Index suggests that weakening temporary jobs in the monthly employment report is not just noise Every week I report the YoY 4 week rolling average of American Staffing Association’s Index. It’s been decelerating recently, and last week was up only +0.5% YoY. On a single week basis, though, it went negative. Because […]
(There’s a movie at the end!) For decades we have been hearing about the loss of industrial production through out what is called the “Rust Belt”. It’s presented, even as recent as the prior presidential election as a relative regional problem that only began post Reagan. What gets me though is that the reporting and […]
“I’m not sure I follow the arithmetic here.” “Unless productivity goes up by at least 25% to compensate, everyone will be worse off.” “Dropping hours from 5 days a week to 4 means that the work that would have been done in 5 days now needs to be done in 4, which means each day […]
The 1912 Bread and Roses Strike Elizabeth Warren made an impressive speech just now in the freezing cold of Lawrence, Massachusetts: Sen. Elizabeth Warren officially launched her 2020 presidential campaign Saturday at a rally in Lawrence, Massachusetts, using the backdrop of Everett Mills — the site of a historic 1912 labor strike led by women and […]
Will INSTEX Replace SWIFT Bank Exchange? Probably not, but reportedly a “White House insider” is afraid it might. Instex is the new exchange created by UK, France, and Germany, to be based i Paris and run by a German banker, to get around US sanctions against Iran. Apparently it will sell Iran humaanitarian goods such […]
February short leading data starts out decent We’ve had two pieces of forward looking data in the last week (in addition to the leading bits in the employment report). The first was the ISM manufacturing index: Contrary to my expectations, the most leading new orders component rebounded sharply, up to 58.2. This is closer to […]