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

Not Quite What They Say It Is

An Unparalleled Record of Support for Federal Student Loan Borrowers  Biden-Harris Administration Approves Additional $4.28 Billion in Student Debt Relief for Nearly 55,000 Public Service Workers, U.S. Department of Education Federal Student Loan Portfolio-by-Age.xls Since day one, the Biden-Harris Administration has been committed to helping borrowers who have struggled with the burden of student loan […]

Personal income and spending continue their positive trend in November, but looking late cycle-ish

 – by New Deal democrat Adjusted for inflation, both personal income and spending came in positive once again in November. But under the hood, the report looked a little tepid, and while it certainly wasn’t recessionary, the data was consistent with what I would expect later in the cycle of an expansion. For the record, real […]

Released Today, Gross Domestic Product (Third Estimate)

Technically a good report. Not what they were expecting. The economy is still strong at the end of 2024. The third estimate of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the third quarter of 2024 shows the economy grew at a 3.1% annual rate, which is higher than the 2.8% forecasted.  Factors contributing to the […]

FED Rate Cut News

I would say Powell is taking a cautious approach. This comes with Trump taking office and Elon tinkering by edicts. The Federal Reserve carried out its third consecutive interest rate cut of the year Wednesday, as its monetary policy easing campaign shows signs of heading for a slowdown. Following its two-day meeting, the Federal Open […]

Trump wants to end the debt ceiling

The US is one of a small handful of countries that has a statutory limit on the federal debt. It used to be routine for Congress to raise the debt ceiling, but recently, House Republicans have been using the debt ceiling to extract political concessions from Democratic Administrations. While raising the debt ceiling wasn’t in […]

Jobless claims: with a dash of seasonality salt trending towards weakness

Jobless claims: with a dash of seasonality salt, trending towards weakness  – by New Deal democrat As expected, jobless claims declined from one week ago, as the delayed Thanksgiving week seasonality moved out of the numbers. Initial claims declined -22,000 to 220,000, while the four week moving average increased 1,250 to 225,500. With the typical […]

An American First. It’s the Law in WA

An American First. It’s the Law in WA: Accrued Holding Gains are Income – by Steve Roth originally posted at Wealth Economics Excluding these massive “economic flows” from income simply doesn’t make any sense, in basic accounting terms. Starting with the 2022 tax year, Washington State implemented a first-in-the-nation (7%) tax on accrued holding gains […]

December Bureau of Labor Statistics

November 2024 Labor Stats as you can read for yourself. I am interested in seeing how the BLS screwed up on earlier employment reports over a period of time. The graphs show part of that period of time. Everything looks like what it should be. I am not going to start a campaign on what […]

The housing sector now hoists a red flag recession warning

 – by New Deal democrat The very important construction data from the long leading housing sector was mixed this morning for November. The most leading datapoint, permits, increased 86,000 on an annualized basis to 1.505 million. Even more importantly, single family permits, which have the least noise and most signal of any of the datapoints, […]

Industrial Production

Industrial production continues to slide  – by New Deal democrat Industrial production declined for the third month in a row in November, down -0.1%, while October was revised downward another -0.2%. Manufacturing production on the other hand increased 0.2% in November, but September and October were revised downward a combined -0.3%, so on net this was another […]