New home sales get walloped New single family home sales got walloped in April, declining -16.6% for the month compared with March, and down -26.9% from one year ago. Measured from their most recent peak last December, they are off -29.6%, and measured from their pandemic peak of August 2020, they are down a whopping […]
Inflation reversals as unique markers of Boom and Bust cycles vs. Fed interventions As I’ve already mentioned a couple of times, I am seeing posts from the usual DOOOMERS warning that a recession is imminent, if we’re not already in one. Typically – again, as per usual – they cite data that they never bothered […]
Boston Public Radio May 19th episode held a discussion of the consequences for the nation when abortion is outlawed. The guest was Jonathan Gruber, the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT. He was involved with the ACA and the Mass health insurance system. Getting right to it: Based on studies: Women who wanted an abortion […]
RJS, MarketWatch 666 Summary: Retail Sales Rose 0.9% in April after March Sales Revised 0.9% Higher Seasonally adjusted retail sales rose 0.9% in April, after retail sales March were revised 0.9% higher, while sales for February were revised a bit lower . . . the Advance Retail Sales Report for April (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated […]
“Will baby boomers unretire?” (beckershospitalreview.com), Molly Gamble, Becker’s Hospital Review Me: I am seeing this phenomenon happening quite a bit myself with multiple inquiries on job status. Millions of older Americans have returned to work in recent months, with nearly 64 percent of adults between ages 55 and 64 working in April. Essentially this is […]
Housing permits and starts decline slightly, but housing still an economic positive over the next 12 months Housing permits and starts declined, but not by much, in April. Importantly, while typically permits, especially single family permits, lead these series, in the past year there has been a unique divergence between permits and starts due to […]
Economic Policy Institute offers an explanation that our current inflation is different from previous recessions in the US in addition to what NDd and Barkley Rosser offer : Since the trough of the COVID-19 recession in the second quarter of 2020, overall prices in the NFC sector have risen at an annualized rate of 6.1%—a […]
Industrial production continues to show excellent growth I call industrial production the King of Coincident Indicators, because it speaks volumes about where the economy is at any particular moment, and empirically is the indicator whose peaks and troughs coincide most definitively with NBER recession dates. In April the story told by industrial production continued to […]
What Is The Worst Part Of The Current Inflation In the US we may have seen the peak of overall inflation, with the annualized CPI rate increasing at 8.3% in April, down from 8.5% in March, the highest rate of increase in 40 years. The issue has become the reported top concern of the US […]
Will tomorrow’s real retail sales report forecast a recession, or just a continued slowdown? No economic data today (May 16) of significance; but tomorrow one of my favorite economic indicators, retail sales, will be reported for April. Since real retail sales lead employment and generally are a short leading indicator for the economy as a […]