David Dayen: The president may soon have an opportunity to remove Louis DeJoy. Later in December of this year, two postal governor spots will be open. The terms of Republican William Zollars and Democrat Donald Lee Moak will expire then. Both Zollars and Moak are allies of Postmaster General DeJoy. At that time, Biden could […]
New jobless claims decline for a (recent) change For the last several months, there has has been nearly a relentless slow increase in new jobless claims. That trend broke, at least for this week. Initial jobless claims declined by 2,000 to 250,000. More importantly, the 4 week average also declined by 2,750 to 246,750. Continuing […]
July real retail sales show more stagnation, but slightly positive YoY Consumption leads employment. Increasing demand for goods and services leads employers to hire more people to fulfill that demand. That, in a nutshell, is the biggest reason why real retail sales is one of my favorite economic indicators. In July, nominal retail sales increased […]
Industrial production heats up in July If the news in the housing sector this morning was bad, the news from the King of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, was quite good. Total production rose 0.6% to a new all-time high. Manufacturing production rose 0.7%, and is below its April peak by only -0.1%: Barring downward revisions, […]
climate and the environment edition This week, a number of articles in My In-Box were about climate and the environment. Seeking Alpha was featuring Michael Smith’s “The Future of Farming,” on their site. Recognizing AB authors is not unusual. Climate and Environment “The U.S. could see a new ‘extreme heat belt’ by 2053” (nbcnews.com), Denise […]
Housing permits, starts, and units under construction telegraph a deeper economic decline ahead Housing had another negative month in July. Permits (gold in the graph below) declined -1.3% to 1.674 units annualized, an 8 month low. Single family permits (red, right scale) declined -4.3% to 928,000 units annualized, the lowest since January 2020 except for […]
Housing affordability: at or near the worst this Millennium The NAR calculates a monthly “housing affordability index,” which estimates the median mortgage payment for the median priced existing home based on an estimate of median household income. For June that came in at 98.5: Not only has affordability deteriorated sharply this year, but the June […]
Angry Bear Michael Smith’s post The Future of Farming reminded me that food and water supply issues need regular updates and highlighting. This report caught my eye since we here in Boston are experiencing very dry conditions with hot day temps. The U.S. could see a new ‘extreme heat belt’ by 2053: The report, released […]
As you “should” know by now, Alan Collinge is an activist and has organized the Student Loan Justice Org a number of years ago. The Organization attempts to represent those student loan borrowers who have no recourse for forgiveness or bankruptcy as every other person in the nation has when taking out a loan? Alan […]
A lot has been said about building semiconductor manufacturing plants in the US. One plant grows the silicon wafers and the other plant fabricates (fabs) the semiconductors. The manufacture of semiconductors is not labor intensive. Growing wafers is boring business as one engineer told me a decade back. The US did manufacture much of its […]