Tag Archives: US EConomics

Strong personal income and spending contrast with near record low in saving  – by New Deal democrat Like retail sales earlier in November, personal income and spending both rose smartly, as shown in the below graph of real retail sales compared with real personal spending: Real personal income was up 0.4%, and real personal spending increased 0.5%: Nominally each increased 0.3% more; i.e., the PCE deflator was 0.3%. Each metric only had...

Initial jobless claims get closer to signaling recession  – by New Deal democrat Today is one of those data-palooza days, so I’ll put up separate posts on personal income and spending, and the ISM manufacturing report and construction spending reports later. But let’s start with weekly jobless claims, and the news here is OK for the week, but the trend is troublesome. Initial claims declined -16,000 from last week’s 3 month high to...

Inflation is defined as a significant increase in the price of most goods and services in an economy over a short period of time. No controversy. Or, is there? And, … since inflation is likely but an effect, a symptom; the real question might should be, “What are the causes of inflation?” It is always better to address the cause rather than the symptom, is it not? Sometimes, in hard times when there isn’t enough money to go around, in an effort to...

– by New Deal democrat House price indexes continue to show the top is in The FHFA and Case Shiller house price indexes were reported this morning, with both continuing to show that the peak in house prices took place during the summer. For the month, the seasonally adjusted FHFA index rose +0.1%, vs. a +0.9% increase one year ago, and following two months of -0.6% and -0.7%, respectively. The Case Shiller national index declined -0.5%,...

Just doing a review of the potential strike being by railroad workers. To sum up the issue(s), proposed wage increases barely keep up with inflation, health care premiums nearly doubling, and a lack of paid sick days in the agreement. It doesn’t sound like that much of a big deal. More in a bit. In recent years, railroads reduced the workforce by 30%. Or, a smaller workforce is moving more freight. Smaller workforce results in less Overhead and...

by Joseph Joyce The Struggle for Hegemony The restrictions by the Biden administration on the sale of semiconductor chips and the equipment to manufacture them represent a new stage in the division between China and the U.S. The belief that increased trade would lead to a convergence of Chinese and U.S. interests faded years ago. The history of globalization shows clearly that the chances of Chinese as well as Russian acceptance of a liberal...

New home sales adjusted for cancellations: still signs that a bottoming process might be taking place by NewDeal democrat I had a correspondent question me about whether new home sales might actually be in the process of bottoming, due to the big increase in the percentage of cancellations, as shown below (via Bill McBride): This is something I’ve been aware of, and commented on one month ago in the context of housing that was permitted but...

Have new home sales made a bottom?  – by New Deal democrat Hopefully you are recovering from your turkey coma today. Here’s a little late commentary on Wednesday’s new home sales report. New home sales are noisy, and heavily revised, which is why I prefer housing permits, and especially single family housing permits, as a source of information. But . . . on the other hand, new home sales tend to be the very first housing metric that...

Jobless claims have a poor week, rising to multi-month highs  – by New Deal democrat Initial claims for jobless benefits rose 17,000 this week to 240,000, a 3 month high. The 4 week average also rose by 5,500 to 226,750. Continuing claims one week ago rose 48,000 to 1,551,000, the highest number since March: While one week like this shouldn’t set off any alarm bells, initial claims has been one of the increasingly few positive short leading...

More on deteriorating tax withholding receipts and jobs reports  – by New Deal democrat I have a new post up at Seeking Alpha, laying out all of the short leading indicators, and concluding conditions have now been met for a recession to begin at any point in the next 6 months. There’s one graph I intended to use which didn’t make it through to the final published piece. Here it is: Typically recessions have only begun when 8 of the 10...