The American working class is doing better, thank you very much  – by New Deal democrat With the release of the CPI report earlier this week, I can update several measures of average middle class American income. Real average hourly wages increased 0.2% in June, and are up 1.6% from one year ago: Real aggregate payrolls […]

I was catching up on the back issues of New Yorker accumulating on the coffee table, and read an article about the rise and decline of libertarianism in the GOP. The idea that anything resembling libertarianism was actually popular in the Republican Party is a joke. Ostensibly, libertarian wants to shrink big government. OK, lets […]

Powell: “Labor costs are really the biggest factor in most parts of that sector (service),” Powell said. “We need to see a better alignment of supply and demand in the labor market and see some more softening in labor market conditions so that inflationary pressures in that sector can also begin to subside.” Open Thread […]

Initial claims move closer to red flag recession warning  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims declined -12,000 last week to 237,000. The four week average declined -6,750 to 246,750. With a one week delay, continuing claims increased 11,000 to 1,729,000: More importantly for forecasting purposes, the YoY% increases were 7.2% for the weekly […]

June inflation almost non-existent except for the fictitious measures of shelter  – by New Deal democrat  The message of this morning’s consumer inflation report was the same for almost everything except for the fictitious measures of shelter: sharp deceleration everywhere. Let’s take a look: Headline CPI up 0.2% m/m and 3.1% YoY (lowest since March […]

as often happens, I felt moved to reply to the e-mail that Noah Smith blasts out. On my PhD supervisor Larry Summers to whom I owe a debt I can never repay: who the fuck cares about inflation ? Answer: everyone but for opposite reasons. Economists think that, in the long run, inflation does not […]

Another well defined report by NDd about the possibility of recessions. Everything points in such a direction. If the Fed keeps raising its rate, it is almost a foregone conclusion. One a recession starts there is no backing away from it (as if we could). Scenes from the employment report: important leading and coincident indicators […]

Scenes from the June employment report: consumption leads employment, goods vs. services edition  – by New Deal democrat No big new economic news today, so let’s take a more in-depth look at some of the information from Friday’s employment report. Today I’m going to focus on the division between goods and services. As I’ve written […]

Weekly Indicators for July 3 – 7 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. A real-time daily update of inflation (based on millions of prices posted at internet sales sites among other things) has become available, and has been added to the array of coincident indicators. The […]

Differences between Japan and the US Debt. Explain how Japan can manage twice the debt/GDP with no problems but the US is headed to a crisis. Or is the issue really about unnecessary deficit spending due to tax breaks skewed to upper income brackets? Open Thread July 2, 2023 Partisan SCOTUS, Angry Bear, angry bear blog