Tag Archives: US EConomics

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog The bifurcation of the new vs. existing home markets continued in March, per the report on existing home sales and prices yesterday. Remember that, unlike existing homeowners, house builders can vary square footage, amenities, lot sizes, and offer price and/or mortgage incentives to counteract the effect of interest rate hikes.On a seasonally adjusted basis, existing home sales declined from 438,000 to...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog For the last 8 months, initial and continuing claims have been remarkably consistent. Initial claims have varied between 194,000 and 228,000, and continuing claims have with the exception of three weeks right at the new year varied between 1.787 million and 1.829 million. That rangebound trend continued this week as initial claims were unchanged at 212,000, and the four week average was also unchanged...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog Industrial production, one of the premier series the NBER has historically used to declare recessions vs. expansions, has faded in importance since China was admitted to regular trading status in 1999. As you can see in the first graph below, both total and manufacturing production peaked in 2007. Further, manufacturing has continued to fade, as its post-pandemic peak has not equaled its 2010’s peak...

by Clare Pastore The Conversation A small city in Oregon with one homeless shelter is enforcing a local anti-camping law. Enforcing it against people sleeping in public using a blanket or any other rudimentary protection against the weather. Enforcing it even if there was nowhere else to go. By taking up City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, SCOTUS will decide whether it is unconstitutional to punish homeless people for doing in public the things...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog There was a big decline in housing starts last month, and a smaller but significant decline in permits. Whether that signifies a change in trend or just noise is the issue. I lean towards the latter. To wit, in reaction to both January and Februarys’ housing construction report I wrote, “To signify a likely recession, units under construction would have to decline at least -10%, and needless to say,...

by Steve Roth Wealth Economics Matthew Klein and Joey Politano have been singularly responsible in their discussions of “excess saving” in the covid era — not least by always putting that term in “so-called” quotes. It’s saving in excess of what would have happened if pre-covid linear trends had continued (with the trend based on some chosen range of preceding quarters or years). It’s an estimate. Great. They sometimes also discuss the...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog As per usual, real retail sales is one of my favorite indicators, because it gives so much information about the consumer, and since consumption leads employment, it helps forecast the trend in the latter as well. And the news this morning was good, as nominally retail sales increased 0.7% in March, while February’s number was revised higher by 0.3% to 0.9%. After accounting for 0.4% inflation in...

OK, Tesla isn’t Bitcoin and it isn’t Trump’s Pravda Social, but: “Tesla announced to Gigafactory Texas employees that it will shorten Cybertruck production shift amid rumors that it is preparing a round of layoffs.“We received several reports today from Tesla employees hearing rumors of an important round of layoffs happening this week at the company.“Some of them are talking about layoffs as high as 20% of the workforce, which would mean tens of...

Medicaid Renewals Of the people retaining Medicaid Coverage as of April 11, 2024 . . . Fifty-nine percent were renewed on an ex parte basis while 41% were renewed through a renewal form, though rates varied by state. Federal rules require states to first try to complete administrative (or “ex parte”) renewals by verifying ongoing eligibility through available data sources. Sources such as state wage databases. Doing this before they send a...

by KFF Pulled together data from KFF to get an idea of what is happening with US healthcare. Big issue is people do not know. Another issue is state’s resistance to enrolling people. Hope this helps . . . Recent data on monthly Medicaid disenrollments, renewals, overall enrollment and other key indicators. Figure 1 above . . . At least 20,104,000 Medicaid enrollees have been disenrolled as of April 11, 2024, based on the most...