Tuesday , March 19 2024
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The Angry Bear

Open Thread March 17 2024, January and February were rough months for inflation

Employ America’s current corecast is for a 2.86% YoY core PCE print for February. The six-month growth rate of core PCE, which was under 2% in December, should now be over 3% in February. Core services ex-housing inflation will be up on a year-on-year basis versus the previous meeting. Many FOMC members, especially among the moderates in the committee (Daly, Mester, Powell, Waller) have expressed a willingness to look through a hot January...

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Inflation and Auto Insurance

Center for Economic Development and Policy Research, CEPR Dean Baker When we hear about inflation most of us probably think of items like food, gas, and rent, but when it comes to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the most frequently cited measure of inflation, auto insurance has played a very large role in recent years. The index for motor vehicle insurance rose 0.9 percent in July. It was responsible for 0.024 percentage points of the 0.4...

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Death of the 6% commission

Apparently, the National Association of Realtors has agreed to eliminate rules on commissions.“The NAR, which represents more than 1 million Realtors, also agreed to put in place a set of new rules. One prohibits agents’ compensation from being included on listings placed on local centralized listing portals known as multiple listing services, which critics say led brokers to push more expensive properties on customers. Another ends requirements that...

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Industrial and manufacturing production improve for the month, but 16+ month fading trend continues

Originally Published at The Bonddad Blog by New Deal democrat Industrial production is an indicator that has faded somewhat in importance in the modern era since China’s accession to normal trading status in 2000. Before that, a downturn in production was an excellent coincident indicator for a general downturn in the economy. Since then there have been several downturns, most importantly during 2015-16, when the broader economy, most notably...

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Fixing Social Security

If nothing is done, the Social Security Trust Fund is currently projected to run out in about 2033. At that point, projected benefits will fall by about 20%.The Boston Globe has an opinion piece about the coming Social Security crisis/crunch. It talks about how Canada deals with the problem. I have a subscription and so don’t know if the link below is paywalled, but here are the nut grafs:“Mechanically it works as follows. Every three years, Canada’s...

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s family finds fault with an award given in her name to Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch

There has to be more deserving unrecognized people worthy of recognition running around today? Why would the Opperman Foundation believe Musk and Murdoch are deserving of such an award given in Justice Ruth Ginsburg’s name? CNN, Tierney Sneed The family of the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wants her name pulled off an award after the foundation in charge of doling it out named SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and conservative media mogul Rupert...

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Good news and bad news Thursday: the good news is jobless claims . . .

 Bonddad Blog – by New Deal democrat This morning brought us both good and bad economic news. The good news was that initial jobless claims continue very low, at 209,000, down -1,000 from last week, while the four week average declined -500 to 208,000. Even better, after major downward revisions, continuing claims rose 17,000 to 1.811 million: Recall that continuing claims had been reported over 1.900 million, so as I said above, this...

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High school financial literacy?

I thought this might make a fun follow-up on my post on 8th grade algebra. Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum discusses a proposal to make a semester of financial literacy a high school graduation requirement. He feels that this would fill a much-needed gap:“There are no long-term tests of financial literacy that I can locate, and overall financial indicators aren’t flashing any red lights. Over the past few decades, both mortgage delinquency and...

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Gaza on the Brink of Famine

The Atlantic, Alan Taylor The United Nations is warning that famine in Gaza is “almost inevitable.” Palestinians living in Gaza are struggling with extreme shortages of food, clean water, and medicine. Several countries, including Jordan, France, Egypt, the U.S., the United Arab Emirates, and now Germany, are coordinating airdrops of humanitarian aid to help alleviate the crisis, and the U.S. military is working to a build a temporary port on...

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King Canute economics comes to Massachusetts

According to legend, King Canute tried to order the tide not to come in. Needless to say, he failed, divine rights of kings nonwithstanding.Back when we lived in North Carolina, we visited the Outer Banks a few times. There were many expensive homes on the shoreline. These were often casualties of hurricanes that would push ocean water up over the islands. Then, as the hurricanes moved up the coast, water that had been pushed into Pamlico Sound would...

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