Tag Archives: US EConomics

A Half Century Since The Beginning Of The End Of The Post WW II Economic Order  It was also on a Sunday, with financial markets closed, that August 15, 1971, when US President Richard Nixon gave a surprise address to the nation on economic policy.  He made three announcements: 1) a 90-day wage-price freeze, 2) a10 percent across the board tariff on all imports, and most importantly, 3) the closing of the gold window meaning the US...

Initial claims continue rangebound, while continuing claims continue slow decline, by New Deal Democrat Initial jobless claims declined 12,000 this week to 375,000, still 7,000 above their best pandemic levels of 368,000 set on June 26 and July 10. The 4 week average of claims increased by 1,750 to 396,250, 11,750 above its pandemic low of 384,500 set on July 10: Significant progress in the decline of initial claims remains stalled, as...

Coronavirus dashboard for August 16: some (relatively) “good” news, some bad news Recently I’ve speculated in a few places that Delta may be acting as a backfire-type firebreak against Lamdba, which has been getting a lot of press as potentially evading vaccines. Confirmation that this may in fact be the case comes from Dr. Eric Topol who writes: The Lambda variant is going out like a lamb. (from the hard to find pandemic good news...

Yesterday Donald Boudreaux published a letter to the Wall Street Journal about the Zywicki lawsuit against George Mason University that I posted about here.  Let’s take a look at classical liberalism in action: Today’s edition contains three letters critical of my colleague Todd Zywicki’s defense, in your pages, of his lawsuit against George Mason University’s vaccination requirement. Each letter-writer, alas, misses a point that’s central to the...

Here is my inflation worry by New Deal democrat I want to follow up on a comment I made yesterday in connection with Wednesday’s consumer price report. It is certainly true that *inflation* is likely to be transitory. The 5.3% YoY inflation we’ve seen in June and July may certainly pass in the next few months and reduce to a more somnolent number under 3%. Hoorah! Inflation was transitory! But what if the price increases “stick?” In...

July consumer inflation: the spike subsides somewhat, but we are close to the limit of “transitory” For the last two months, my theme has been that if the spike in inflation only lasted two or three months, it was not a big deal, but if the trend were to continue longer, it would begin to impact consumer spending, and it will get the Fed’s attention. In that regard, the “good” news is that in July consumer inflation was “only” 0.5%. The bad...

Scenes from the July jobs report [Note: I haven’t put up a Coronavirus dashboard in almost a week. I’ll try to get around to that later today or tomorrow. It isn’t *all* bad news.] Last Friday’s jobs report for July was probably the most uniformly positive report I have seen since I started writing about them going on 15 years ago. Let’s take a look at a few of the most salient items.First of all, unemployment (blue in the graph below) at...

June JOLTS report: at last, new hires (slightly) outpace record job openings This morning’s (Aug. 9) JOLTS report for May was the best we have seen since the immediate rebound from the pandemic lockdowns.  There was yet another record level continued all of the unfilled job openings, yet another new record low in layoffs and discharges, an enhanced number of people quitting their jobs, and finally – for the first time this year – a huge number...

June Job Openings at Record High after May Record Revised Higher; Commenter RJS from MarketWatch 666; Record Low Layoffs; Hiring, Quitting, Retiring All Much Higher The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report for June from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that seasonally adjusted job openings rose by 590,000, from 9,483,000 in May to 10,073,000 in June, after May’s job openings were revised 274,000 higher, from 9,209,000 to...

Initial jobless claims continue in range, while continuing claims sharply decline Initial jobless claims declined another 14,000 this week to 385,000, still 17,000 above their best pandemic levels of 368,000 set on June 26 and July 10. The 4 week average of claims declined by 250 to 394,000, also 9,500 above its pandemic low set on July 11: Significant progress in the decline of initial claims remains stalled, as it has for the last 2...