Housing continues to surge Low interest rates continue to fuel a strong upsurge in new housing construction. I’ll put up a more detailed post later, but for now simply note that housing permits, both overall and for the less volatile single family housing component, made new expansion highs, at levels not seen since 2007. Housing […]
What Is “Democratic Socialism”? Probably the best answer is whatever Bernie Sanders says it is as he is by far the most famous person ever to adopt this term as a label for his beliefs. There is a group in the US bearing that name, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has been in […]
Bloomberg’s Plan for Reskilling America: The Quid without the Pro Quo The Intercept usefully preports Michael Bloomberg’s proposals for higher education, focusing on plans to upgrade workforce skills along the lines desired by employers. Here’s the selection they excerpted that covers this, worth reading carefully: There’s a lot here that would be useful to businesses located […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for February 10 – 14 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.Several of the coincident indicators that turned positive one week ago turned right back to negative this week. The bifurcation between the producer and consumer sides of the economy continues. As usual, clicking over […]
by David Zetland (One handed economist) Mark Miodownik’s 2014 book is another in the most-welcome genre of “pop science” — a genre of books that explains scientific ideas in clear and comprehensible prose. Miodownik’s insights into the abundant materials surrounding us (glass, steel, plastic, etc.) really help you grasp the miracles that scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and geeks have […]
Standing on the shoulders of cranks I use the term “crank” affectionately. The figure below is a valiant effort by Arthur O. Dahlberg to depict the “socio-economic process” as a network of troughs, pipes and valves. Even this elaborate contraption is confined to “the movement of the major social variables.” Dahlberg believed that his chart […]
Real retail sales continue flat in January; production sector still in recession Retail sales increased nominally by +0.3% in January, while December was revised downward by -0.1%, for a net gain of +0.2%. Since consumer inflation increased by +0.4% during those two months, real retail sales were unchanged. On a per capita basis, they declined […]
Engel Criticizes Trump On Soleimani Assassination Juan Cole reports that House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair, Eliot Engel (D-NY) has criticized the administration for its assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in response to a report fresh out of the DOD that said the attack was for past activities by Iran in attacking tankers and oil […]
Have we reached “full employment”? An update As an initial matter, this morning’s initial and continuing jobless claims report were positive as to all metrics by which I judge them. They are near the bottom of their recent ranges and/or are lower YoY (lower being good). I’ll add a graph once the info is available […]
Where is the puzzling growth in service jobs coming from? Continuing with my week of follow-up stories based on last Friday’s jobs report, I noted last Friday that there was a completely anomalous upwards revision of nearly 100,000 jobs in the last 8 months of 2019. This after a -500,000 decrease, based on full data, […]