House price increases still strong, but clear deceleration from peak The Case Shiller and FHFA house price indexes were reporting this morning, covering the period through December. As you all know well, my mantra is that interest rates lead sales, and sales in turn lead prices. Here’s this month’s update. The monthly increase in the […]
You’re reading the right blog, Presidents‘ Day edition No economic data today due to the Presidents’ Day holiday, so here is something else I ran across over the weekend. Former Federal Reserve Economist Joseph Gagnon critiqued a Paul Krugman column about the cause of inflation. He notes that the causes of this inflation are both […]
RJS, MarketWatch 666, Producer Prices Rose 1.0% in January, but Annual Increases are Off the Record Highs The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 1.0% in January, as average prices for finished wholesale goods rose 1.3% while final demand for services rose 0.7% . . . that increase followed a revised 0.4% increase […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for February 14 – 18 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. As the Omicron tsunami recedes, what is still present is high commodity prices (not least of which is gasoline), and mortgage rates at levels that have not been seen in close to 3 […]
A housing warning: affordability, at long last, is approaching its housing bubble nadir If current price and mortgage trends hold, we are about 6 to 12 months away from matching the very worst housing affordability at the peak of the housing bubble. Let’s start with a comparison of existing home sales (blue, reported today for […]
by Joseph Joyce Risk and FDI While FDI flows recovered in 2021 from the previous year’s decline, not all countries benefitted from the increase. UNCTAD reported that almost three-quarters of global FDI flows in 2021 occurred in advanced economies, and China and other Asian economies recorded the largest increases amongst the emerging markets and developing economies. Multinational companies are […]
Housing permits jump; the last hurrah before mortgage rates bite? This morning’s report on January housing permits and starts highlighted the unique divergence between the two. As I have often pointed out, permits are the more leading and less noisy of the two reports, so I usually highlight them, especially single family permits. But in […]
Herbert Marcuse and Planned Obsolescence “Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence, and everybody who can read without moving his lips should know it by now. We make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then next year we deliberately introduce something that will make those products old fashioned, out of date, […]
A note on producer prices and (possibly) cooling inflation One point I make from time to time is that, with seasonally adjusted data, YoY comparisons can miss, or at least lag, turning points. We *may* have such a situation developing with producer prices as evidenced by this morning’s report (Feb. 15). On a YoY basis, […]
The current trend in both cases and deaths in the US has me the most hopeful I have been in over 6 months. Here’s why. Nationwide, cases have declined to 150,000, only 30,000 above their level just before The Omicron wave started, and about 10,000 less than their Delta peak: The Omicron wave has been […]