Positive housing, initial claims, and Philly Fed outweigh negative industrial production So, after a nearly empty week until now, there were four economic reports this morning. Three of them were good. First, although overall housing starts and permits declined, single family permits, the most forward looking and least volatile of the metrics, were only 3000 […]
A Nobel for the Randomistas I don’t think anyone was surprised by this year’s “Nobel” prize in economics, which went to three American-based specialists in the design of on-the-ground experiments in low income countries, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. I think the award has merit, but it is important to keep in mind […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 7 – 11 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The stars are aligning for the recovery from the present slowdown in the longer term. But in the meantime, the present and short term data is still soft. As usual, clicking over and […]
Scenes from the September jobs report I shared the best good news from the September jobs report released last Friday: there’s a good argument that the economy has reached “full employment,” although we could do even better if real wages improved more. Today let’s look at the bad news, which comes from examining the leading […]
August JOLTS report: nearly all employment measures now neutral The JOLTS report for August showed a decline in all metrics m/m as well as a slowing trend overall. To review, because this series is only 20 years old, we only have one full business cycle to compare. During the 2000s expansion: Hires peaked first, from December […]
Medicare for All The abstract for “Does Medicare Coverage Improve Cancer Detection and Mortality Outcomes?” by Rebecca Mary Myerson, Reginald Tucker-Seeley, Dana Goldman and Darius N. Lakdawalla: Medicare is the largest government insurance program in the United States, providing coverage for over 60 million people in 2018. This paper analyzes the effects of Medicare insurance on health for a group […]
Real average and aggregate wages for September Now that we have the September inflation reading, let’s take a look at real wage growth. First of all, nominal average hourly wages in September increased +0.2%, while consumer prices were unchanged. As a result, after rounding, real average hourly wages for non-managerial personnel increased +0.1%. This translates […]
Closing The Open Skies Trump’s stonewalling on impeachment is the top story, snore. Lower down and more important is Trump allowing Turkey to attack the Kurds in Syria with the support of Russia. Even GOP senators do not like this and ISIS fighters may get out. But, heck, those will go to Europe, and unlike […]
Drain the Ukrainian Swamp Trump’s latest excuse for withholding arms for the Ukrainian government to defend itself against Putin’s invitations so he can extract dirt against the Bidens is what again? Oh yea – he wants to root out corruption. REALLY? OK – start with this: KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian […]
I plan to vote for Warren in the primary and general election, but I am not thrilled by all aspects of her plan for economic patriotism. I also have doubts about medicare for all (good policy bad politics) and forgiving student debt (good politics bad policy). Trying to be brief and actually get to the […]