Analytical Bias The world is made up of systems. Our body is a system, or in fact a system of systems. What we call “society” is another system of systems, as is the natural environment. And all these meta-systems are themselves elements in even more encompassing systems that interconnect them. But these systems are very […]
August jobs report: some weak points, but the underlying very good trend continues While the NBER has declared that the recession ended in April 2020, neither the King nor Queen of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, and jobs, have recovered to their pre-pandemic levels. The former is only off by -0.2%, but the latter – which […]
Producer sector remains on fire, while two most important indicators of consumer sector falter As has been the pattern for the last several months, August data started out with a strong reading on manufacturing, while July ended with weak data on housing construction. As a side note, the latest read on motor vehicle sales also […]
Jobless claims show continuing improvement, now well within normal expansion range Way back at the beginning of spring, I set a goal of initial claims being 400,000 or less by Labor Day as a marker for a good COVID recovery – which I was reminded of because the aforesaid holiday is this weekend. Well, we […]
Really modest and meant seriously (apologies to Swift). All Senators and Representatives get a full pension for their natural lives (equal to salary) They may never ever receive any money from any entity other than the Federal Government. No salary and all investments must be in Treasury securities (oh and nooo royalties – ever). No […]
A fundamentals-based look at the consumer indicates the expansion is in good shape for now I was going to update the Coronavirus dashboard today, but since half of the States no longer bother to report over the weekend, Monday is basically useless. There may be a few interesting things happening … but let’s wait until […]
by Dale Coberly (Dale has been posting on AB on Social Security for over 12 years…some of his work and Bruce Webb’s can be found under our new category Social Security) Social Security Trustees Report OutCRFB Lies About It When is a not-a-lie really a lie? When the liar gives you a part of “true information” […]
July personal income and spending return to normalcy. Normalcy is good How well personal income and spending held up throughout the pandemic is one of the best things about the government response. That has continued to be the case as of this morning’s report for July. Real personal income (blue) increased 0.7%, and is 4.2% […]
2nd Quarter GDP Revised to Indicate Growth at a 6.6% Rate The Second Estimate of our 2nd Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that our real output of goods and services grew at a 6.6% rate during the quarter, revised from the 6.5% growth rate reported in the advance estimate last month, as growth in […]
Commenter and Blogger RJS, MarketWatch 666, Industrial Production Rose 0.9% in July After Prior Four Months Were Revised Higher The Fed’s G17 release on Industrial production and Capacity Utilization for July indicated that industrial production rose by 0.9% in July after rising by a revised 0.2% in June and a revised 0.8% in May, and is now up 6.6% […]