Tag Archives: US EConomics

Strength in housing and cars, oh my! The two consumer goods which turn down before recessions, and up before recoveries, are houses and motor vehicles, in that order.Since January housing permits and starts came out yesterday, let’s take a look at both. First, while housing starts retreated slightly from their December levels, the more leading and less volatile permits, and the even less volatile single family permits, both made new 14 year...

You’re reading the right blog: 2021 economy edition “You’re reading the right blog” is an old chestnut (for me anyway) that I used to say from time to time to highlight a correct forecast that your (not so?) humble blogger made well in advance of more widely read sources.Well, please bear with me for one more self-pat on the back. For at least 6 months, I have been saying that the economy was poised to pick up strongly in 2021 once the pandemic...

Trade is great; trade is good. Since at least 2000 BCE, since the first inter-tribal (what was to become international) trading of horses, gold, silver, silk, foods, oils, wines, knowledge, technologies, …; trade between peoples has enrichened the lives of humans everywhere. Traditionally, trade was the great cross fertilizer. Without trade, our world would be a lot more like it was 4000 years ago than what it is like today. But first, before...

We Need a Plan for Militias  A social trend can lie dormant for years, gradually expand and then suddenly explode as if following a hidden exponential growth curve.  Revolutions work this way, and so do religious cults.  Most of the time the curve is nipped in its early phase, but not always.  It isn’t a good idea to assume a fringe movement will always remain fringe. This brings us to the topic of right-wing militias, people who carry assault...

Jobless claims: huge upward revisions for the second week in a row The story this week is the repeated massive upward revisions to last week’s numbers This week, on a unadjusted basis, new jobless claims declined by 5,702 to 862,351. Seasonally adjusted claims increased by 13,000 to 861,000 (meaning last week’s original number of 793,000 was revised higher by almost 50,000! – the 2nd week in a row for huge upward revisions). The 4 week moving...

Blockbuster January retail sales presage gains in jobs (Dan here…late posting) [NOTE: I’ll report separately on industrial production later this morning. Real retail sales is my bellwether for the health of the consumer. And after 3 months of declines, we got a huge upturn in January. Before adjusting for inflation, retail sales jumped 5.3% – not annually, 5.3% in one month! After adjusting for inflation, sales were up 5.0%, to a new all-time...

Industrial production continues strong growth If real retail sales (reported on in the prior post) is the best proxy for the health of the consumer, Industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, is the same for production.  And the news there was also very good. Overall production rose 0.9% in December, and the manufacturing component rose 1.0%. As a result, overall production is only -1.9% below its level just before the pandemic...

Steve Hutkins at Save The Post Office, The 2020 Mail Delays: Stats & Charts Preface The inventor of MRPII, Oliver Wight, coined a term for management deliberately obstructing the implementation of MRPII calling them “Cement Heads.” In Louis DeJoy’s case, rather than work with today’s postal system; DeJoy is deliberately sabotaging it with his changes. The end result will lead to its demise and subsequent takeover by private enterprise....

Initial and continued jobless claims: signs that the worst of the pandemic related layoffs may be behind us Some – very relative – good news in unemployment claims this week. It looks like the recent increase in new claims has peaked, while continued claims continue to decline. With new daily infections, still horrible at 100,000/day, only 40% of their 250,000/day peak, and vaccinations slowly increasing near 1.5 million/day, we may have seen the...

Before Science, treating the symptoms of an illness was all we had. Along our way, using trial and error, we found a few things that worked. The big breakthroughs came when we started to look for the causes of an illness. The association of an illness with toxins was deducible. Then, as we knew more and could see farther, we found that most of our physical illnesses were caused by such other things as bacteria, and viruses. Still and yet, we see...