New home sales: despite the noisy sharp increase in August, the last pre-recession metrics are firmly negative – by New Deal democrat Have I mentioned before that new home sales, while perhaps the most leading of all the housing data, suffer from being very noisy and heavily revised? Yes, I think I have, just about […]
– by New Deal democrat In addition to my system of long and short leading indicators, and the weekly high frequency data, the third system I use to mark to market my views of the economy is what i call “the consumer nowcast.” Introduction I have various systems for tracking the economy — including high-frequency weekly […]
American hospitals are under siege. The Trump administration just announced an increase from $1500 to $100,000 per year for H-1B visas that are used by foreign-trained physicians. The recently passed GOP budget dramatically cuts Medicaid funding, cuts that will drive the closure of many rural and community hospitals that are on the edge of insolvency. […]
Trump administration’s tariffs on U.S. imports are passing through the supply chains and ending up impacting the consumers wallet in the form of increasing prices. There is no way to avoid these increases in the US. These are two industries which are disproportionately worse-off, I am familiar with due to my experience in manufacturing. They […]
The Trump GOP’s Medicaid cuts will cause many rural hospitals to close. Now, Trump has come up with a way to hasten that process. “NBC News medical analyst Dr. Vin Gupta warned of the consequences that President Donald Trump’s imposed $100,000 annual visa fee for highly skilled foreign workers could have on those seeking health […]
– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Along with the continuing resilience of consumer spending, which I wrote about yesterday, the other surprise in the data has been the strong rebound in manufacturing indexes in the past 45 days, as evidenced by several of the regional Fed situation reports […]
– by New Deal democrat One of this things that has puzzled me for the last few months is why consumer spending has remained so strong in the face of so many headwinds in the economy, some from horrible policy coming out of Washington, some embedded in the long leading and short leading sectors. There is […]
While we were grad students at UNC-Chapel Hill, we visited my wife’s uncle and his family on the Outer Banks. He built fishing boats, and lhey lived in a modest house in Buxton, near Hatteras lighthouse. Hatteras lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse in the US. In 1999, Hatteras lighthouse was moved from its original location […]
– by New Deal democrat We are in the part of the year when, post-Covid, likely residual seasonality has resulted in a declining trend in new jobless claims. Not this year. On a week over week basis, initial jobless claims did decline -33,000 from last week’s outlier 264,000 to 231,000, and the four week averaged declined […]
Look, I haven’t watched TV in over 20 years. I’ve never seen a Superbowl game in my life, and the only time I’ve seen Jimmy Kimmel is clips on Youtube. So I can’t boycott Disney because I wasn’t patronizing them in the first place. Anyway, Bob Iger cares about stockholders first, last and always. “If […]