The current spike in gas prices is not sufficient to bring about a recession (at least, not yet!) [Well, I never got around to a COVID update last week. Since most States don’t report over the weekend, I am going to wait until tomorrow. But the bullet point hint is: it increasingly looks like Omicron […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for February 28 – March 4 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. There are two big stories dominating the data. The first is how inflation, and the anticipated Fed rate hike, are affecting interest rates. The second is the ramifications, particularly for commodities, […]
RJS, MarketWatch 666; January’s construction spending As usual, I estimate the impact of revisions to prior months on 4th quarter GDP, and the impact of the January report on 1st quarter GDP… Construction Spending Up 1.3% on Higher Costs in January after December and November Spending Was Revised Higher The Census Bureau’s report on January construction spending (pdf) […]
Fascist Traditionalism And Putin’s Invasion Of Ukraine About a half-century ago I was urged by my oldest friend to read a book by Fritjof Schuon (1907-1998) written in 1953, The Transcendental Unity of Religions. The book’s title basically tells its message: that while each religion has its own exoteric forms that differ from those of each […]
February jobs report: a Big Win! There were two main trends I was looking for in this jobs report: 1. Is the pace of job growth beginning to decelerate? 2. Is wage growth holding up? Is it accelerating? The answers were: 1. The 6-month average of monthly gains, which was running at 548,000 in the 2nd […]
The cleric Th. Chalmers, in the otherwise in many respects ridiculous and repulsive work… has correctly struck upon this point, ‘Profit,’ says the same Chalmers, ‘has the effect of attaching the services of the disposable population to other masters, besides the mere landed proprietors, . . . while their expenditure reaches higher than the necessaries […]
Continuing claims continue near 50 year lows as the Omicron tsunami continues to recede, NDd [Programming note: Hopefully I’ll put up a coronavirus update later today.] Initial claims (blue) declined 18,000 to 215,000 (vs. the pandemic low of 188,000 on December 4). The 4 week average (red) declined 6,000 to 230,500 (vs. the pandemic low […]
Monetary Sovereignty, Sanctions and Russian Economic Policy The central role of economic sanctions in the US/EU strategy against Russia has returned international political economy to the center stage if it had ever left it. Here are some thoughts occasioned by Adam Tooze’s interesting analysis of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) as perceived by the Russian economic policy apparatus, […]
February car sales decline, but truck sales continue rebound; plus a comment about the urgency of dealing with supply chain issues I used to follow vehicle sales more closely – until the vehicle manufacturers, one by one, stopped reporting monthly, and only updated quarterly for the previous quarter. That makes the data much less timely, […]
Manufacturing continues red hot, while construction gains completely consumed by inflation February monthly data started out this morning with the ISM manufacturing report. The index, especially its new orders subindex, is an important short leading indicator for the production sector. In February the index rose from 57.6 to 58.6, as did the more leading new orders […]