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

3rd Quarter GDP Grew at a 2.1% Rate, Revised from 2.0%

Blogger and Commenter RJS, 3rd Quarter GDP Grew at a 2.1% Rate, Revised from 2.0%; All on Inventories, No Real Final Sales The Second Estimate of our 3rd Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that our real output of goods and services grew at a 2.1% annual rate over the quarter, revised from the 2.0% […]

Weekly Indicators for November 22 – 26 at Seeking Alpha

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for November 22 – 26 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Despite the roiling of the financial waters (on thin trading, with all of the A-list movers and shakers away from their desks) on Friday, the underlying indicators for the economy in all timeframes […]

Freeing Former Students of Loan Debt, a Conversation

An Intro and some history: Alan Collinge at Student Loan Justice Organization. Alan has collected 1,065,931 signatures on his petition asking President Joe Biden to cancel student loan debt. His new goal is to reach 1.5 million signatures. If you believe in the cause you should sign his petition. Petition · President Biden: Cancel Federal […]

Oct. Durable Goods: New Orders Down 0.5%, Shipments Up 1.5%, Inventory Up 0.6%

RJS at MarketWatch 666, October Durable Goods: New Orders Down 0.5%, Shipments Up 1.5%, Inventories Up 0.6% The Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for October (pdf) from the Census Bureau reported that the value of the widely followed new orders for manufactured durable goods decreased by $1.2 billion or 0.5 percent […]

New home sales for October continue slow upward trend

New home sales for October continue slow upward trend New home sales, while very noisy and heavily revised, tend to lead all of the other housing indicators, even permits. The heavy revisions figure, well, heavily, into this morning’s report. New home sales (blue in the graphs below) usually slightly lead to the much less volatile […]

Impacting Oil Pricing with SPR Oil Releases

Commenter and Blogger RJS at Focus on Fracking and MarketWatch 666 brought up the past history of US SPR oil releases and the impact on oil prices in the Comments section. Since 1990, each time releases (SPR) have been made, there has been a countering reduction of oil by OPEC which could include Russia this […]

The consumer spending spree continued in October

The consumer spending spree continued in October, New Deal democrat Real personal income and spending held up well throughout the pandemic, due to a vigorous government response. With special benefits ended, the question has been: will they hold up? This month, the answer was a definite “yes.”In nominal terms, personal income increased 0.5% and spending […]

Playing With The Strategic Petroleum Reserve

EconoSpeak: Playing With The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Barkley Rosser Over the last month crude oil prices have noticeably declined from in the neighborhood of $85-86 per barrel to $78-80 per barrel. But there has been only a very small decline in retail gasoline prices, and the headlines even as of yesterday was all about “sharply […]

Lowest new jobless claims in over half a century

Lowest new jobless claims in over half a century The first two of four data releases this morning were corporate profits for Q3 and jobless claims for last week.Corporate profits, a long leading indicator, increased slightly in Q3 over Q2, by 1.9% or 4.2% depending on whether you include various inventory adjustments. Deflated by unit […]

Existing home sales and prices, increase slightly; inventory declines slightly

Existing home sales and prices, increase slightly; inventory declines slightly [Programming note: There will be at least 4 significant reports tomorrow (Nov: 23): jobless claims, personal income and spending, new home sales, and corporate profits for Q3. Then nothing for the rest of the week. I may or may not report on everything tomorrow. I […]