Strong demand because people had money to spend when they would have had nothing if the ARP was not put into play. By the same token, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was targeting the upper 1% of the taxpayers with the next 4% tagging along. It in itself was ~$2 trillion much of which […]

 – by New Deal democrat As usual, the month’s data begins with the ISM manufacturing index, and with a one month delay, construction spending. Because manufacturing is of diminishing importance to the economy, and was in deep contraction both in 2015-16 and again in 2022 without any recession occurring, I now use an economically weighted three […]

Medicare Advantage Plans are notorious for denying healthcare treatments to plan subscribers. CMS is intervening by making a much-needed change to how Medicare Advantage plans decides on treatments needed by plan subscribers. Just a couple of pointers showing how MA has been serving it customers . . . the public. In the existing MA bidding […]

 – by New Deal democrat Let me finish catching up this week with a quick look at personal income and spending, which were reported on Wednesday. The “big” takeaway I’ve seen elsewhere is that inflation picked up, and maybe will complicate the Fed’s task. But I don’t see where it’s such a big deal. The […]

There are a huge number of anomalies and biases which can be understood as confusing the claims that the probability of p conditional on q is high if the conditional probability of q conditional on p is high.  One is diagnostic expectations – the conditional probability that a person has red hair if the person […]

 – by New Deal democrat I suspect that both hurricanes as well as mortgage rates somewhat distorted all of the housing reports for October. Last week with existing home sales I noted that “While sales remained in range, price appreciation increased and the pace of inventory accumulation decreased.“ There was something of a mirror image […]

An explanation of over-reaction to new data starts with a principal agent model. The idea is that the forecasts are made by agents who are trying to impress people who pay for the forecasts.  Another, and more important, case is that of professional money managers who are investing other people’s money and trying to convince […]

I’ve read where Musk and Ramaswami are proposing a 75% cut in the federal workforce. That’s absurd. • National security-related agencies account for roughly 70% of the civilian workforce. The largest employers were the Department of Veterans Affairs, with 487,000 workers, followed by the armed services, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department. […]

If you have been reading New Deal democrat all along, you will remember NDd’s commentary on October 23rd (the link is below) discussing the possible stall of corporate profits. Maybe it is an easy call and maybe not. There are negatives to corporate profits stalling. Read on . . .  – by New Deal democrat […]

 – by New Deal democrat Let me start to update this week’s data with jobless claims. Initial claims fell another -2,000 to 213,000, the lowest since last May. The four-week moving average declined -1,250 to 217,000, also a six-month low. With the usual one-week lag, continuing claims rose 9,000 to 1.907 million: As with one […]