Weekly Indicators for December 28 – January 1 at Seeking Alpha – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. In a sparse data environment, it continues to stand out how surprisingly well – under the circumstances – the economy is doing, and how primed it is to really take off once […]
Even More Questions What is capital? What power does capital have when invested in machinery, lands, agricultural improvements, etc.? What happens to individuals when they have experienced the accumulative power of money?
Final jobless claims of 2020 continue to show a lack of progress New jobless claims declined for the second week in a row this week, but are still significantly above their recent pandemic lows, while continuing claims, seasonally adjusted, once again made a new pandemic low. There is a sizable but by no means certain […]
The Four big coincident indicators as of the end of 2020 All of the important economic data for 2020 has already been released. In this final week only November house prices and one last week of jobless claims remain. So this is a good time to take a look at the current state of the […]
Jobless claims continue to show a sideways to an upward trend New jobless claims declined this week, but are still significantly above their recent pandemic lows, while continuing claims, seasonally adjusted, made a new pandemic low. The downward trend in claims has clearly ended for now, although whether the current trend is sideways or upward […]
Bubble Bubble Toil And Trouble? Or maybe not. So recently there has been a lot of buzz that we may be seeing a variety of speculative bubbles in the US and indeed world economy. Many asset markets have risen in the last few months, with several of them either reaching new highs or getting close […]
The 2004-2020 political red/blue shift: the intersection of geography, the economy, and ethnic migration It’s a very slow, holiday-shortened economic week. We’ll get new home sales, plus personal income and spending Wednesday, and jobless claims as usual Thursday. In the meantime, here is something I found revealing. It’s a map, created by Nathan Jordan, a college […]
Housing permits and starts for November: yet more evidence of an economy primed for takeoff in 2021 If there was bad news yesterday in the further increase of initial jobless claims, there was also good news in the 10+ year highs in new housing permits. Here’s the graph of permits (blue), single-family permits (red, right […]
I had written on the high cost of pharmaceuticals late 2019, “Another Look at Drug Pricing, Costs, and Why” citing from the World Health Organization, the ICER, JAMA Network, Health Affairs, and my own posts (links below and in text). You will find the some of the same articles cited in new commentary of increased […]
JOLTS report for October: similar to previous 2 recoveries, but a decline in actual hiring may be a warning This morning’s JOLTS report for October showed a jobs market recovery that, for one month at least, paused. Openings and quits were up (good), but layoffs and discharges were also up (bad) while hires were down […]