The Angry Bear

April’s consumer and producer prices, retail sales, and industrial production; March business inventories and JOLTS, Commenter RJS, Market Watch 666 Producer Prices rose 0.6% in April on Higher Wholesale Food Prices, Wider Margins for Transportation Services The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.6% in March, as prices for both finished wholesale goods and margins of final services providers rose 0.6%. That...

 Protesters trashed windows at the Oregon State Historical Society and left this graffiti:  Credit: Willamette Weekly Econospeak . . . Tags: econospeak blog

[embedded content] Credits: Reuben Walker, animation and music. Tom Walker, concept and design. Charles Wentworth Dilke, Sydney John Chapman, and Arthur Olaus Dahlberg, analysis and inspiratio. Tags: econospeak blog

New jobless claims continue to improve, while continuing claims concerningly stall New jobless claims continue to be the most important weekly economic datapoint, as increasing numbers of vaccinated people and outdoor activities have led to an abatement of the pandemic – both new infections and deaths are near their lowest points in a year.  We have hit my objective for new claims to be under 500,000 by Memorial Day. My second objective is...

April retail sales “disappoint,” but maintain almost all of March’s surge [Note: I’ll comment on industrial production in a separate post later]At first glance, April’s retail sales report looks like another Big Miss. Nominally (blue) sales increased less than 0.1% (rounded to unchanged). Adjusted for inflation (red), they declined -0.7%: But the important point is that the big jump in March didn’t get taken back.  As I wrote last month:...

April’s consumer and producer prices, retail sales, and industrial production; March business inventories and JOLTS, Commenter RJS, Market Watch 666 Retail Sales Unchanged in April after Big Revisions to Prior Months’ Sales Seasonally adjusted retail sales were statistically unchanged in April, after retail sales March were revised higher, while sales for February were revised much lower. The Advance Retail Sales Report for April (pdf) from the...

For just a pocketful of Russia’s rubles, Putin facilitated Brexit, doing irreparable harm to the UK and the EU. With what was left over, he did enormous harm to the US, and weakened NATO. No shots were fired, no missiles were launched, and no missions were flown. No weapons that go bang were deployed, and not a single Russian boot trod foreign soil. Putin did more damage with that pocketful of change than his army could have ever done. Yet, the...

Weekly Indicators for May 10 – 14 at Seeking Alpha  by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The big news in this past week, even though it has been expected for several months, was on the inflation front. That doesn’t affect the nowcast, and hasn’t affected the short term forecast yet. The long term forecast continues to be buffetted by increased interest rates. In my commentary this week, I make reference...

April Industrial Production slightly disappoints – but only due to supply chain bottlenecks Industrial production is the King of Coincident Indicators, and is the one whose peaks and troughs most frequently mark the beginning and end of recessions. It had been bouncing back strongly, but in the last several months, has hit something of a snag. In April, total production increased 0.7%, while manufacturing production increased 0.4%:...

Trade Deficit Increases 5.6% to Record High in March on Rising Imports of Consumer Goods, MarketWatch666, Commenter RJS Our trade deficit was at another record high in March, 5.6% higher than in February, as both our imports and exports increased, but our imports increased by more. The Commerce Department’s report on our international trade in goods and services for March indicated that our seasonally adjusted goods and services trade deficit rose...