– by New Deal democrat Consumption leads employment, and retail sales are the most timely monthly indicator of consumption. Indeed, population-adjusted real retail sales in the past have tended to turn negative one year or more before a recession has begun. In June, nominally retail sales rose a strong 0.6%. But because consumer prices rose 0.3%, […]
Just some local events and news in southern Arizona . . . As I read in the local newspapers . . . construction of TSMC semiconductor facilities is continuing in Arizona near Tucson. I went by this facility a while back. I also went by the latest facility not that long ago. I have included […]
We made it out of a pandemic, a potential recession, and other issues which threatened the nation with Fed Chief/Chair Jerome Powell guiding the nation’s financial stability. The Fed did implement several policies to stabilize the financial system and support the flow of credit to households, businesses, and state and local governments at the onset […]
– by New Deal democrat Probably the brightest spot in the entire economy right now is initial jobless claims. Contrary to the general theme of deceleration which has been the case for several years now, initial claims appear to be breaking trend in the positive direction. Specifically, initial claims declined -7,000 last week to 221,000, their […]
Some potential and real health issues which go unchallenged for now or are largely ignored. I read these articles and thought they may be interesting enough to be read at Angry Bear also. These are partials of longer commentaries. No so long as to give up on them halfway through them. Air and water pollution […]
– 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 June was […]
Look, if they were serious about making America healthy, here is a short list of things Congress and the Administration can do: • restore and expand Medicaid benefits; • restore and expand SNAP; • eliminate the Medicare Advantage plans; • support and expand childhood vaccinations; • replace our current nightmare of private insurance with single-payer, […]
– by New Deal democrat Much of the commentary on yesterday’s CPI report suggested that the tariff impacts were apparent. My own analysis was more cautious. That’s simply because we don’t know for sure which items were affected by tariffs, and at this point referring to, e.g., appliances that showed relatively large monthly increases in prices […]
A recent photo of a park and probably a practice raid on an area where people hang out kind of makes you wonder why people would want to come to America. Why come when the US President and a host of bigoted supporters make life miserable for people who look different, speak with an accent, […]
– by New Deal democrat We are at somewhat of an inflection point as to consumer inflation. On the one hand, the post-pandemic inflationary effects continue to fade. But on the other, we are waiting for the effects of Tariff-palooza! In June the waning post-pandemic effects continued to dominate, as the only items still rising […]