I saw this bit of news on Steven Colbert’s show last night. Seems Nevada’s Democratic Governor thinks tech companies need to be their own town. The thinking is that this is a way to attract business development without spending money. What could go wrong? From the AP news: “Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan […]
Commenter R.J.S.: Record drops in US oil output, US oil exports, distillates’ output on Texas freeze as US burns 15% of natural gas inventories in one week . . US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending February 19th indicated that because the big drops in our oil exports and our oil refining associated […]
Two leading sectors of the economy – manufacturing, and housing – turn even hotter Last month I wrote that both the manufacturing and housing sectors were “on fire.” If anything, this month they turned white hot, with both construction spending and ISM manufacturing data at levels not seen in years. The overall ISM manufacturing reading […]
From WAPO: Senior Democrats are abandoning a backup plan to increase the minimum wage through a corporate tax penalty, after encountering numerous practical and political challenges in drafting their proposal over the weekend, according to two people familiar with the internal deliberations. . . . Economists and tax experts have said that the tax outlined […]
Some State AGs Take Action Seventeen State Attorney Generals signed and sent a letter to Congressional leadership (Schumer, Pelosi, McConnell, McCarthy) calling on Congress (Friday February 19) to pressure President Joe Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in federal student load debt for borrowers as a part of pandemic relief. The AGs write: “As the […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for February 22 – 26 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. After months of virtually no changes in any of the time frames, suddenly there is activity in all of them. Some of it: – is short term noise due to the disaster in […]
January personal income and spending show how important government stimulus has been to keeping the economy afloat This morning’s report on January personal income and spending shows just how important the stimulus packages enacted by the federal government both last spring and last month have been to sustaining the economy.After adjusting for inflation both personal […]
Steve Hutkins at Save The Post Office continues his dialogue on planned changes to USPS operations with one change amongst the others resulting in later deliveries of first class mail. The Washington Post was the first to report on this change as well as other changes. You may be able to catch portions of Louis […]
New home sales rise m/m, but signal caution for housing market going forward New home sales increased to a three month annualized high of 923,000 in January. This is of a piece with the positive news last week on housing permits. At the same time, the pace remains below the recent high of 979,000 annualized […]
Initial jobless claims: it appears that the worst of the winter 2020-21 increase is behind us Let me start off this week’s review of initial jobless claims by pre-debunking something I am sure is going to be said elsewhere: a lack of reporting in Texas did *not* appreciably skew this week’s numbers. Applying the same […]