by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for December 10 -14 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. A decline in mortgage rates unsurprisingly appears to have caused a rush in applications to lock in those rates. Plus one more anomaly ….
Real retail sales very positive; industrial production decent Real retail sales for November, together with the revisions for October, were very positive. While November sales, both nominally and adjusted for inflation, increased +0.2%, October sales were revised upward to a nominal +1.1%. On an inflation adjusted basis, that translates to +0.8%. As a result, as […]
A note on initial jobless claims Initial jobless claims for last week were reported at 206,000 this morning. That is one of the lowest weekly readings during this expansion.More significantly, the 4 week moving average is back below 10% off its low, within the range of typical noise: And it is down -4.6% YoY, which […]
Via NPR on the Arctic: The Arctic has experienced the “most unprecedented transition in history” in terms of warming temperatures and melting ice, and those changes may be the cause of extreme weather around the globe, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2018 Arctic Report Card. The annual report released Tuesday says rapid warming over […]
Dorothy was in a strange land and had no idea what would happen next. The good witch of the North said she should follow the scientific method to a sound forecast. Unfortunately, neither she (nor anyone else) explained what exactly the scientific method is. As she wandered down the yellow brick forking path of endless […]
CNN, Thursday: The Department of Education will implement a rule known as the Borrower Defense to Repayment created during President Obama’s Administration and blocked by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in 2016. The rule or regulation grants federal loan forgiveness automatically for students who could not complete their education due to the schools shutting down […]
Real wage growth: November 2018 update Now that November inflation has been reported (as unchanged), let’s update what that means for real wages. Nominally, wages for nonsupervisory workers grew +0.3% in November. With inflation flat, that means real wages also grew +0.3%: Even so, although they are at a new 40 year high, real hourly […]
The October JOLTS report: very good employment market continues, just below best levels Monday’s JOLTS report for October was, surprisingly, a little weaker than the employment report from one month ago, that I described at the time as perhaps the best in the entire expansion. But this is a relative statement; basically, most of the […]
Shiller Hystericizes The US Housing Market I have the deepest respect for Robert Shiller, who has been one of the most serious students of the dynamics of speculative bubbles there is, winning a well-deserved Nobel Prize for his work on this important topic. One of the more significant parts of his work has been on […]