It is standard analysis to see real and nominal imports as a share of GDP quoted to estimate the importance of imports in the economy. Currently that shows nominal imports are about 15% of GDP and real imports are some 18% of real GDP. But I suspect that this comparison understates the role of imports […]
I wrote a post with this title which is poor, solitary, nasty, and long over at Robert’s stochastic thoughts. the bottom line is I say Friedman was always a Keynesian except for his insistence that the effect of the nominal interest rate on money demand is more or less pretty much negligible. This means that […]
Many of the photos were taken before water and air pollution were fully regulated. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, and the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972. Baltimore, Birmingham, Cleveland, Delaware, Denver, Kansas, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco all feature here, in shots filled […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for August 12 – 16 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The data continues to be dominated by a steep decline in long term interest rates. These have both inverted further portions of the yield curve and reinvigorated the housing market. As usual, clicking […]
Positive July housing permits and starts The housing starts and permits report this morning for July adds to the positive data looking forward to H2 2020 (or, possibly, less bad – but that’s another discussion). First, here are overall permits (red) and starts (blue): While the very volatile starts declined, the slightly more forward looking […]
Industrial production, jobless claims, and retail sales As I noted this morning, a slew of important data was released. Let me deal with the “normal” weekly and monthly data in this post. First, industrial production continues to languish, down significantly from the end of last year, whether measured in total or just as to manufacturing: […]
Quick hits on a major Thursday economic news blitz There has been a ton of significant economic news this morning. I’m not going to be able to get to all or even most of it in depth. So I am going to leave a quick rundown here. Starting with the positive: -nominal retail sales up […]
Just thought this would be of interest to our readers. This was aired yesterday, 8/15/19 on: The Take Away, NPR. (About 12 minutes long.) Click the arrow to hear
While the yield curve turning negative is getting a lot of attention and seems to be the main excuse for yesterdays stock market drop, there are other financial indicators that are also signaling weaker economic growth ahead. The primary one is quality spreads as the yield on corporate bonds are rising relative to treasuries. This […]
” The long line of trucks is a traffic jam of military trucks. Shenzhen (China), to state the obvious, is across the border and located just north of Hong Kong (see map). This show of force could still be a well poised threat to Hong Kong warning them to discontinue their protests or else. Shenzhen […]