Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

New home sales continue rangebound, prices continue to decline, inventory continues to rise

 – by New Deal democrat This morning’s report on new home sales for June indicated that sales continue to be rangebound, YoY prices continue to decline, and inventory of homes for sale continue to rise. This complicates the story of rebalancing between new and existing homes. To recapitulate, while new home sales are the most leading measure […]

Trump wants to end capital gains tax on home sales

Recently, Trump said he was “thinking about” ending capital gains taxes on home sales. Who benefits? “The biggest beneficiaries of such a change will likely be longtime homeowners in the country’s more expensive housing markets. “Removing or increasing the capital gains limit — currently $250,000 for single homeowners or $500,000 for married couples — on […]

Do Tariffs have a Purpose Other Than Enriching Trump?

Traditionally, tariffs have been used to protect domestic industry, particularly agriculture and labor-intensive manufacturing. Trump has argued that his tariffs will return manufacturing to the United States and further that they will raise revenue helping offset the $3.4 trillion increase the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations will add to the debt over the […]

Jobless claims: clear evidence of a break in trend to the downside

 – by New Deal democrat Last week I suggested that there might have been a break in the trend of higher YoY jobless claims, but there was not enough evidence yet. It is fair to say that this week’s report supplied that evidence. Initial claims declilned another -4,000 to 217,000, the lowest weekly number since mid-April. […]

June existing home sales: a pause in the rebalancing of the housing market

 – by New Deal democrat Housing data for June resumed this morning with existing home sales.  Let me start with my usual caveat: although they typically constitute about 90% of all sales are the least important for forecasting purposes, since the main thing that happens is only a change in ownership, and therefore they have much less economic […]

Financing Up Coming U.S. Government Debt

Or How Trump’s Bill (with the help of Republicans) Funding Tax Breaks to a Select Upper Income Few Deliberately Breaks the Rest of the Nation. Cost of Financing U.S. Government Debt, EconoFact The Issue: The share of government spending devoted to paying interest on the United States’ government debt has risen since 2020 exceeds what […]

Updating transport and consumer spending since Tariff-palooza!

 – by New Deal democrat New economic data will resume tomorrow. Since I haven’t updated the impact of Tariff-palooza! on transport and spending in awhile, let’s take a look at that. The “tip of the spear” is container shipping. Here’s a graph of traffic at the busiest ports in the US, from CNBC: At the busiest […]

What Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen Says . . .

Janet Yellen warns of dire consequences of drastic Fed rate cuts “Former Fed Chair sends stern message on economy,” Fed “There have been episodes in the past that we know about now where U.S. presidents have attempted to pressure the chairs of the Federal Reserve, Yellin said in a CNBC interview. She said the most […]

Real average wages and aggregate payrolls for nonsupervisory workers for June

– by New Deal democrat Once again there is a hiatus in the data for a couple of days. So let’s take a look at two of my favorite labor indicators: real average hourly wages and real aggregate payrolls for nonsupervisory workers. First, here are real average hourly earnings for nonsupervisory workers: These were unchanged in […]

‘It’s just better’ According to the U.S. President

Its appears Coca-Cola will be launching a cane-sugar soda this fall in the U.S. The beverage company announced its implementation in its second quarter earnings on Tuesday. This, according to Hannah Parker at Quartz. The new product announcement comes nearly a week after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social Wednesday to declare Coca-Cola agreed to switch […]