Weekly Indicators for August 11 – 15 at Seeking Alpha – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. This week I quantified the difference between commodity prices in the US$ vs. a basket of all other currencies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the upward pressure on commodity prices appears to be all, or almost […]
Looking at crime in Washington D.C. as compared to similar, smaller, and larger cities. Washington D.C. is no worse than other cities and is better than most. Looking at all crime and homicides. If you go to the site Council on Criminal Justice, you can take a deeper dive. I chose five cities to review […]
– by New Deal democrat As per usual, retail sales are one of my favorite economic indicators, because in the past they have told us a lot about both where the economy is at present, and because consumption leads employment, so much about where the economy is likely to be in the near term future. […]
32 economists associated with the University of Chicago at some point in their careers were awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics. With all that expertise, you’d assume that the University of Chicago would be a paragon of […]
– by New Deal democrat Industrial production is much less central to the US economic picture than it was before the “China shock,” since so much production moved overseas, meaning US consumers buy much more imported goods than they used to. Still it is an important if diminished coincident indicator. This morning’s report for July can […]
This piece by Claudia Sahm is about two weeks old. The perspective is still worth reading. The economy is still be pulled one way or another as Tr__p plays he tariff games up and down and who makes deals and who does not. That is enough to create uncertainty in the market. “There are factors […]
– by New Deal democrat Normally I don’t pay too much attention to producer prices, but occasionally they are very important – and today is one of those days. Here’s why. In the past, as shown in this graph going back over 50 years: when producer prices outstrip consumer prices, that means producers aren’t able to […]
Dean Baker: Don’t Buy the Scare About Social Security. “The increase in spending on Social Security from 2033 to 2034 (measured as a share of GDP) is 0.03 percentage points. That would be less than 1.0 percent of the Pentagon’s budget. This is the extent of the increased economic burden in the year the trust […]
– by New Deal democrat Obviously this morning’s PPI number was the most important report of the day. I want to get to that later, but first let’s update the jobless claims situation. The good numbers in initial claims continued, as they declined -3,000 to 224,000. The four week moving average increased 750 to 221,750. But […]
by Paul Krugman Paul Krugman on E.J. Antoni taking over BLS if appointed by Pres, Trump. “there’s a good chance that Antoni will, in fact, take over the BLS. And the result will be the total destruction of one of the world’s greatest statistical agencies.” On Monday I wrote about Donald Trump’s disastrous press conference touting the […]