The state of inflation There’s no big economic news today (Aug. 22), and as usual very limited COVID reporting over the weekend, so let’s catch up on the state of inflation in the economy. Three of the biggest components of inflation have been gas, housing, and vehicles. Let’s look at each in that order. According […]
Just as some of those first to suffer the consequences of Climate Change were those who had been subsisting on marginal lands; some of the first to suffer the consequences of the most recent round of inflation were those who had been subsisting on marginal incomes. This was a lot of Americans. Before inflation, they […]
Weekly Indicators for August 15 – 19 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The continued decline in gas prices has been doing some nice things to other indicators as well. Meanwhile, manufacturing as measured by the regional Feds is getting worse. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you […]
Prices of existing homes have probably peaked By now you may already know that existing home sales declined further in July, to an 8 year low (excluding the pandemic lockdown months: This is roughly a 30% decline from their peak, and is certainly a recessionary level. But perhaps more importantly at the moment, it […]
David Dayen: The president may soon have an opportunity to remove Louis DeJoy. Later in December of this year, two postal governor spots will be open. The terms of Republican William Zollars and Democrat Donald Lee Moak will expire then. Both Zollars and Moak are allies of Postmaster General DeJoy. At that time, Biden could […]
New jobless claims decline for a (recent) change For the last several months, there has has been nearly a relentless slow increase in new jobless claims. That trend broke, at least for this week. Initial jobless claims declined by 2,000 to 250,000. More importantly, the 4 week average also declined by 2,750 to 246,750. Continuing […]
July real retail sales show more stagnation, but slightly positive YoY Consumption leads employment. Increasing demand for goods and services leads employers to hire more people to fulfill that demand. That, in a nutshell, is the biggest reason why real retail sales is one of my favorite economic indicators. In July, nominal retail sales increased […]
Industrial production heats up in July If the news in the housing sector this morning was bad, the news from the King of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, was quite good. Total production rose 0.6% to a new all-time high. Manufacturing production rose 0.7%, and is below its April peak by only -0.1%: Barring downward revisions, […]
climate and the environment edition This week, a number of articles in My In-Box were about climate and the environment. Seeking Alpha was featuring Michael Smith’s “The Future of Farming,” on their site. Recognizing AB authors is not unusual. Climate and Environment “The U.S. could see a new ‘extreme heat belt’ by 2053” (nbcnews.com), Denise […]
Housing permits, starts, and units under construction telegraph a deeper economic decline ahead Housing had another negative month in July. Permits (gold in the graph below) declined -1.3% to 1.674 units annualized, an 8 month low. Single family permits (red, right scale) declined -4.3% to 928,000 units annualized, the lowest since January 2020 except for […]