The Angry Bear

I think it might be time for an update on the crudest of tiny sample reduced form analysis of fiscal policy and the current recovery. One reason for my continued interest is that there was a rather large tax cut enacted in 2017. Trump critics tend to argue that it failed to encourage investment, but did affect aggregate demand. I wonder if the noticeable increase in GDP growth is due to the tax cut or the spending increase from the 2017 omnibus spending...

April jobs report: great headlines, signs of fraying around the edges HEADLINES: +263,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate declined -0.2% to 3.6% (new expansion low) U6 underemployment rate unchanged at 7.3% Leading employment indicators of a slowdown or recession   I am highlighting these because many leading indicators overall strongly suggest that an employment slowdown is coming. The following more leading numbers in the report tell us about where...

The Blue Dogs suddenly have remorse over supporting the nomination of what’s-his-name . . . Elmer Fudd or was it William Barr? Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) The most vulnerable Democratic Senator up for reelection next year, said he is “’greatly, greatly’ disappointed in what I am seeing in the attorney general.” While Barr did follow through on releasing a redacted version of the Mueller report and did not quash the investigation, Jones now has much deeper...

Construction spending, manufacturing, and temp jobs all decelerate further or decline On Sunday I said, “Construction spending … should follow housing permits and starts with a delay of several months. But, oddly, even though starts in particular have continued to languish, spending has come back strongly since last November. I’ll be looking to see if that anomaly continues, or whether construction spending reverts to its historical pattern.” I also wrote...

The John Bates Clark Award And Me Getting Old Yes, this is going to all be about me! ? So, before getting to me, me, me, let me congratulate Emi Nakamura of the UC-Berkeley economics dept for receiving the John Bates Clark Award. It seems to be well deserved for her innovative and influential work on looking at high frequency detailed micro data sets to get more accurate estimates of macro variables, including both inflation rates and fiscal...

Median wage and salary growth stalls in Q1, while overall positive trend remains intact UPDATE: real household income declined The Employment Cost Index is a median measure of wages, and also total compensation, for the 50th percentile worker. Thus it escapes the “Bill Gates walks into a bar” issue with average measures. Sunday I wrote that “It has been improving for several years now, and I am expecting it to continue.” Not quite. While both the wage...

My discovery that half the annual increase in the not seasonally adjusted core CPI occcurs in the first quarter and that simply doubling the first quarter increase gives you an amazingly accurate estimate of the December to December reading work again in 2018. In 2019 it is saying the annual increase in the core CPI will be about 2% — the same as the widely accepted consensus. Figure 1

[unable to retrieve full-text content]FoxConn, Valerie Bauerlein. Microsoft News “Six miles west of Lake Michigan in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin lies a cleared building site half again as big as Central Park and ready for Foxconn Technology Group’s $10 billion liquid-crystal-display factory. Contractors have bulldozed about 75 homes in Mount Pleasant and cleared hundreds of farmland acres. Crews are widening […]

What I’m watching for this week This week is going to be a really busy one for economic data. I’m not going to be able to do detailed posts on everything. But because in the past couple of months most of the data has gone against my “2019 slowdown” scenario, I thought both in the interests of transparency, and to put down a few benchmarks to anchor my analysis, I’d write down what I am looking for in each release. Monday – personal income for March;...