Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

January personal income and spending: treading water, leading metrics sinking

 – by New Deal democrat Before I get to the main event, a couple of quick comments on the other data released so far this morning:  1. Real GDP as revised only grew at 0.7% annualized in the 4th Quarter of last year. This is often, but by no means always, recessionary. And since there was […]

Disinflating shelter prices and deflating gas prices work wonders for January CPI

No, it is not a mistake by putting the title at the head of this post (above) and a second time below. I did not want the AB readers to think I was writing this commentary about January CPI results. This report belongs solely to New Deal democrat. Oh, I did write or report on […]

January jobs report: superb monthly gains, but the birds came home to roost for 2025

– by New Deal democrat This is the month the birds came home to roost, at least for the year 2025. While the month over month numbers were almost all positive, some strongly so (a repeat of what we saw last January as well, so beware unresolved seasonality), the benchmark revisions were brutal. Which is likely […]

Medicaid and ACA Healthcare Cuts

Briefly, we have not gotten to the place where the impact of healthcare insurance cuts are going to occur. I suspect the impact will be devastating to many US citizens. July 2025, Republicans led by Trump passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, otherwise known as the budget reconciliation bill. The law, H.R. 1, has […]

January ADP private employment and ISM services reports show increasing stagflation in a weakly growing economy

– by New Deal democrat [Administrative note: the good news is, graphs are back! The bad news is, it is extremely glitchy and energy consuming, so my fingers are still crossed. Basically it boils down to Apple and Google don’t want to interact with one another, and have to be repeatedly dragged, kicking and screaming, into […]

ISM manufacturing for January breaks out to the expansionary upside, with a sidecar of stagflation

 – by New Deal democrat Although it ended almost three months ago, there are still many economic series that have not caught up, including construction spending, which would normally have been reported this morning for December. As of now, it is only updated through October, and November and December are not expected to be reported for […]

“ICE in My Latte, Not in Our Communities”

What is happening down in Arizona? These businesses will be giving up Friday’s revenue by shutting down a day in protest of the government’s actions and the killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by Federal authorities. ~~~~~~~ “Local businesses closing Friday (January 31, 2026) to protest ICE raids,” The Copper Courier Fair Trade Cafe in […]

Economically weighted regional Fed indexes for January suggest continued stagflationary pressures [Update: PPI as well]

– by New Deal democrat To briefly reiterate, although the government shutdown ended over two months ago, much of the official monthly data – including on sales and spending – is stale, dating to November and even earlier. So the most current measures of these are the ISM manufacturing and non-manufacturing reports, due next week, and […]

Jobless claims: the positive regime change continues, suggesting a lower unemployment rate ahead

 – by New Deal democrat Let’s take our normal weekly look at jobless claims. As a general reminder, these are a good high frequency short leading indicator for the economy as a whole, and also somewhat noisily for the monthly unemployment rate. In the past several months, I have highlighted what appears to be a “regime […]

Regional Fed manufacturing indexes suggest rebound continued in January, with continued inflationary (tariff-related?) pressures

 – by New Deal democrat Although the last federal government shutdown has been over for 2.5 months — and a new one might begin this weekend — with the exception of a few headline indicators like inflation, industrial production, and employment, most of the data is still lagging by at least one month, i.e., it has […]