Briefly, with more info being found at The American Prospect by David Dayen (link below). The USPS has initiated check cashing service for a minimal fee. And Louis Destroy the USPS DeJoy has bought into this service. The pilot was launched on September 13 (?) in four locations: Washington, D.C.; Falls Church, Virginia; Baltimore; and […]
Manufactuing remains white hot, while construction spending is mixed As usual, we started out the month with the forward-looking ISM manufacturing report for September, as well as construction spending for August. Let’s take the ISM report first since it is an important short-leading indicator for the production sector. And here, the news was good, as […]
Dennis Smith writes in the Ohio Capital Journal: While the U.S. Capitol was placed under assault some months ago, public education has been targeted for forty years, when Ronald Reagan signaled his followers that the public sector was undesirable and that private enterprise was always preferable in the nation. His attitude was immortalized in his remark that […]
New jobless claims increase: exit Delta, enter supply chain chokepoints? This week jobless claims were higher for the third week in a row, and the 4-week average also rose slightly. Initial claims rose 11,000 to 362,000, and the 4-week average rose 4,250 to 340,000, from last week’s pandemic low: Meanwhile, continuing claims declined 18,000 […]
The Open Access Movement In Academic Publishing I apologize that I look like someone voting for 3.5 and then sometime later saying that they only support 1.5, but I am not interested now in discussing that matter. So, here I go. 1) I support Open Access in academic journal publications. 2) OTOH I grant that […]
Real spending increases, real income declines in August (Note: I’ll report separately on construction spending and the ISM manufacturing index later.) Real personal income and spending held up well throughout the pandemic, due to a vigorous government response. This morning these were reported for the last full month of any assistance. In nominal terms, personal income […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for September 27 – October 1 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Commodity prices and transportation costs continue to soar, and there are even signs of further acceleration. If you go by the regional Fed reports, it is beginning to affect manufacturing. If you […]
House prices continue to surge. But maybe . . . Both the FHFA and Case-Shiller house price indexes for July were released this morning. Both showed a continued surge in house prices, with one difference that may be of importance. First, here are both indexes normed to 100 as of January 1991, when the FHFA […]
I don’t know why I’m writing about this when our democracy is on fire. Maybe I need to focus on something cheery, like climate change. The American Prospect has a couple of pieces up on insurance and climate change. One identifies a genuine issue, the other misses the mark. In this piece, Alexander Sammon asks […]
Blogger and Commenter RJS Briefly: even though US Covid infections have been falling since labor day, there’s been anecdotal evidence it’s rising among school age kids . . . at the same time, there are now solid studies showing that the mRNA vaccines administered in the US are losing their effectiveness . . . hence, […]