Tag Archives: US EConomics

I got to this article about the Home Value Index Report after reading an Insider’s “The Fight Over Airbnbs Is Now Descending on Small American Cities,” businessinsider.com, Dan Latu. The article is about Airbnb rentals in Bozeman, Montana. Bozeman residents are trying to figure out what to do as it is driving up the prices of homes and the resulting taxes. It all started with the pandemic and people escaping the more populated areas to Bozeman a...

 Weekly Indicators for April 24 – 28 at Seeking Alpha – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Several important short leading indicators rallied this week. In particular, the stock market seems to think the worst is over (for the moment!). At the same time, several important coincident indicators of taxation and employment are on the cusp of rolling over again. As usual, clicking over and reading will...

A mixed picture on real personal income, savings, and spending in March, and real total sales in February  – by New Deal democrat As I’ve indicated a number of times recently, right now I consider the report on personal income and spending co-equal to the employment report as the most important monthly data. For March, it was a mixed bag. Nominally, personal income rose 0.3%, and personal spending was unchanged. Because the applicable...

Health Care Cost and Utilization Report, healthcostinstitute.org, April 2023 Year-over-year and 5-year cumulative trends in health care spending for individuals with employer-sponsored insurance. A detailed report by the Health Care Cost Institute covering the period 2017 – 2021 which includes the Covid pandemic. Decreases i total costs were seen during the pandemic. Still in the end, you will see pricing being the biggest factor in healthcare...

Leading components of Q1 GDP paint a mixed picture – by New Deal democrat As you probably already know, real GDP increased 1.1% at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate in Q1. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the economy improved throughout the period. The median GDP for the quarter where post WW2 recessions have begun was +2.4%, and there are reasons to believe that the reason for the positive number in Q1 was big January gains. We’ll find...

Four week average of initial claims drops below “yellow flag” level, for now  – by New Deal democrat While GDP will get the lion’s share of attention today (and I’ll post on it later on), by and large it is a look in the rear view mirror. The more forward-looking data is weekly jobless claims. This week initial claims declined -16,000 last week to 230,000. The more important 4 week average declined -4,000 to 236,000. Continuing claims, with...

voting 217 Yes 215 no the House has passed a bill which would increase the debt ceiling, slash spending, and repeal (most of) the IRA. This ends the fun period when we could laugh at Republicans for demanding that Biden negotiate without themselves making a bargaining proposal. The bill is horrible. I am a Democrat in disarray trying to figure out how to respond (and who should respond). One possibility is to stick to the position that there...

To be clear, our national debt problem is due to revenues insufficient to cover expenditures. More than anything else, for the past 40 plus years, this accumulated deficit is due to Republican opposition to tax increases coupled with their eagerness to cut taxes on the wealthy given the opportunity to do so. Most, if indeed not all, currently serving Republican US Senators and Representatives, and State legislators have signed a pledge to never vote...

 Are Home Sales Bottoming? – by New Deal democrat For the past few months, I have speculated that home sales were bottoming. This morning’s report on March new home sales put an exclamation mark on that idea.New home sales increased 57,000 in March (from a February level downwardly revised by -17,000) to 683,000 annualized (blue in the graph below). The increasing trend in sales from the bottom of 543,000 last July at this point seems crystal...

House prices on track to go negative YoY by summer, despite monthly increase in February  – by New Deal democrat House prices through February as measured by both the FHFA (gold in the graphs below) and Case Shiller (red) Indexes rose, the former by 0.5% (after a downwardly revised 0.1% in January), and the latter by 0.2% (after a -0.2% decline in January). Here’s what the monthly changes look like for each, as compared with Owners’ Equivalent...