Tag Archives: US EConomics

– by New Deal democrat First things first: there’s almost no significant economic news at all this week until Thursday, so don’t be surprised if I play hooky for a day or two. The coincident headline news out of last Friday’s employment report was very positive, so most all observers heaved a sigh of relief. Of course, precisely *because* it is coincident, it could all be reversed next month, or by next month’s revisions to Friday’s data....

Former Bear Bill McBride at Calculated Risk is sharing another of his excellent commentaries. This time his focus is on rising homeowner insurance costs. Timely for sure. Helene has gone through the southern states and another hurricane is coming. Insurance costs were up then and will more-than-likely increase again for states bordering the Atlantic. I have noticed our HO Insurance taking a jump also. CalculatedRisk Newsletter by Bill McBride...

Taken from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Gross Domestic Product (Third Estimate), Corporate Profits (Revised Estimate), and GDP by Industry, Second Quarter 2024 and Annual Update Partial Report: Real gross domestic product (GDP) is increasing at an annual rate of 3.0 percent as shown in the second quarter of 2024 (table 1). This is according to the “third” estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP...

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. There was a slight fading of several indicators in the short leading and coincident sphere, but overall the positive and improving trend continues. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the state of the economy, and reward me a little bit for organizing and presenting it to you. The Bonddad Blog Weekly Indicators for...

From Prof. Timothy Snyder’s substack “Thinking about…” Shared with permission:“Think about the politicians Trump idolizes, Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The first undid a democracy through fake emergencies, the second through persistent constitutional abuse. It is not hard to see why Trump likes them. “Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country....

One of the biggest issues in the US is who lives in poverty and how it is determined. People get upset when there are people living on food stamps. Unfortunately, many of us do not know how the government does determine poverty. I am hoping this may explain it somewhat. This report is providing estimates of two measures of poverty: the Official Poverty measure and the more recent Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). Used since the 1960s, the...

 – by New Deal democrat Recently I have paid much more attention to the ISM services index. That’s because, since the turn of the Millennium, manufacturing’s share of the economy has contracted to the point where even a significant decline in that index has not translated into an economy-wide recession, as for example in 2015-16.  When we use an economically weighted average of the non-manufacturing index (75%) with the manufacturing index...

Partisan Divide? Per the poll discussed below, only 48 percent of Trump supporters got raises while 72 percent of Biden supporters got raises.  27 percent of Trump supporters had changed jobs while 43 percent of Biden supporters had changed. Data and Reporting Again today Paul Krugman said “the average worker’s purchasing power is higher than it was five years ago.”  Dean Baker has also made the same observation, saying “workers in the...

 – by New Deal democrat Especially in view of the relative weakness in the jobs report for the past few months, my focus continues to be on whether jobs gains are most consistent with a “soft landing,” i.e., no further deterioration, or whether there is further decline towards a recession.  For this month at least, the verdict was clear: both the Establishment and Household Surveys pointed to “soft landing.” Below is my in depth synopsis....

– by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims will be up against some very challenging comparisons for the next 6 months or so, due to some unresolved post-COVID seasonality. Which means that the headline numbers this week, which look very benign at the surface, are not quite so good as they have been for the past year. For the week, initial claims rose 6,000 to 225,000. The four week moving average declined -750 to 224,250. Continuing claims,...