Steve Hutkins of Save The Post Office critiques the cost-saving measures put into play to-date by PMG Louis DeJoy, the bypassing of the Postal Regulatory Commission which is supposed to review such plans, and the resulting unprecedented mail delays across the country. Steve proposes a plan to meet the Covid crisis impact on the Postal service […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 12 – 16 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. What was most noteworthy about the past week is the confirmation that consumer spending, so far, has continued to hold up even as emergency Congressional assistance has been terminated for a month and […]
Why Does MbS Want Hillary Clinton’s Emails? In yesterday’s Washington Post David Ignatius reports in a column about serious efforts by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) to get the infamous emails of Hillary Clinton publicized, something that President Trump also wants and SecState Pompeo has been promising while complaining about problems getting them […]
Slavery, never gone, had been given new life in Europe with slaves from Africa; first by Portuguese Traders in the 15th Century, then by the Spanish in the 16th. The bubonic plague of the 14th Century had wiped out one-third of Europe’s population; Europe needed laborers. Slavery was widely practiced on the continent and in […]
Jobless claims: only one week’s data, but cause for significant concern Today marked the biggest increase in new jobless claims in two months, and one of the two biggest increases since May, while the slightly lagging continuing claims continued to decline. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims rose by 76,670 to 885,885. […]
Consumer prices rise a “normal” 0.2% in September In September Consumer prices rose a “normal” 0.2%, the first such typical increase since the pandemic began (blue in the graph below): For the past 40 years, recessions had typically happened when CPI less energy costs (red) had risen to close to or over 3%/year. We are […]
This chart can be found here at EPI: Figure 1
College educational attainment by age demographic There is no economic data today due to the Columbus Day observance. So let me drop this graph of a metric I have been trying to find, of college educational attainment by age demographic, that I finally came across a couple of days ago: It is commonplace that […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 5 – 9 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Because the pandemic so quickly and completely put the economy in a coma back in April, and the economy remains at severely depressed levels by most metrics compared with a year ago, in […]
August JOLTS report conforms to prior early recession recovery pattern Yesterday’s JOLTS report for August showed a jobs market that is still just beginning to mend. Hires were up, and layoffs and discharges were down, which is good, but job openings and voluntary quits both declined. We are far enough along past the worst […]