How To Go After The US Wealthy Reagan Style Ah yes, this is going to be another one of those ironic posts about what a big leftist liberal Ronald Reagan was compared to the current GOP gang in charge of so many of our policies, especially our tax policies. Certainly, the image of Reagan is […]
UPDATE: Foxconn now says that it will indeed still build a factory, citing a conversation between CEO Terry Gou and Trump (h/t commenter Joel at Angry Bear). This is certainly clear as mud. As others have pointed out, several promised investments from Foxconn have failed to materialize at anywhere near the scale promised, including in Brazil, Pennsylvania, Indonesia, Vietnam, […]
Leading scenes from the employment report not so positive I seem to have been the only person to pick up on the weakness in the underlying leading aspects of last Friday’s jobs report. While the number of job gains was great, and that average wages for non-managerial workers had their second best showing, at 3.4%, […]
The End Of The End Of The Cold War It is a sign of how wacko things have gotten that the truly most important event of the past week has simply been buried in the news by all the huffing and puffing over Trump’s shutdown ending and these revelations about VA Governor Northam. This would […]
January jobs report: a tale of two almost diametrically opposed components HEADLINES: +304,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate rose 0.1% from 3.9% to 4.0% U6 underemployment rate rose 0.5% from 7.6% to 8.1% Here are the headlines on wages and the broader measures of underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want […]
Advance reading of January manufacturing supports further slowdown I have been using an average of the five regional Fed new orders indexes to forecast the direction of the ISM manufacturing new orders index, and indirectly manufacturing production. Now that all five regional Fed indexes have been reported, here’s a comparison of the regional Fed averages […]
Foxconn is flailing in Wisconsin (Insert your joke here.) In what may end up as the biggest economic development failure in U.S. history, Foxconn announced Wednesday that its $10 billion Wisconsin factory will not be a factory. Instead, the company says, it will still create 13,000 jobs, but these will be research jobs rather than manufacturing ones. […]
A note on pending home sales and construction employment The NAR reported that pending home sales declined -2.2% m/m in December. Since this is based on contract signings, it suggests that *existing* home sales will continue to decline for the next month or two. A few commentators have expressed surprise at the negative number, since mortgage […]
Flying blind: a note on the long leading forecast for the second half of 2019 We are still “flying blind” on some important economic data, most notably housing permits, starts, and sales, and GDP. As of this morning, neither the Commerce Department nor its Census Bureau have indicated when these reports will be released, although […]
Robert H. Nelson Dies: Religion And Economics Robert H. Nelson of the University of Maryland Public Policy Department died at age 74 on Dec. 15 while attending a conference in Helsinki, Finland. He was the leading economist writing about the relationship between religion and economics, notably in three books: Reaching for Heaven on Earth: The Theological […]