Tag Archives: US EConomics

[unable to retrieve full-text content]MarketWatch 666, R.J.S., June Producer Price Index Sets YoY Records for Final Demand and Intermediate Services; 46 year High for Prices of Intermediate Goods The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 1.0% in June, as prices for finished wholesale goods rose 1.2% while margins of final services providers rose 0.8%…that increase followed a […] The post June Producer Price Index for Final Demand and...

Imagine that in the 1970s you bought a plat along the coast in Florida that was on a large pile of sand that was basically at sea level upon which you planned to build a four-hundred unit, twelve story tall, condominium complex. This complex was to rest on a slab of concrete that rested atop the pile of sand and a lot of long pilings driven deep into the pile (but not to bedrock). If you will, the building(s) were to rest atop a concrete many-legged...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for July 12 – 16 at Seeking Alpha My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. All timeframes continue positive, but the renewed outbreak of COVID – indeed, its uncontrolled exponential spread – is the proverbial elephant in the room, and is quite likely to Bigfoot the entire forecast and nowcast. And with the many crosscurrents, the effect on the economy is fiendishly difficult to forecast....

This post is before my time of writing at Angry Bear. It does fit in nicely with the need for reasonable economics of our times and I noticed its popularity growing . The author of this piece is Kash, one of the originators of AB. This is a rehash which has seen rising popularity. If you consider when this was written, it was on the precipice of the 2008 collapse when both Wall Street and Main Street were ready to fall into a depression. While...

Real wages decrease sharply – at least, if you include used vehicle prices As I pointed out yesterday, the big increase in inflation over the past few months has made the YoY change in real wages for nonsupervisory workers negative. Let’s take a little closer look. Here is a graph of wages for nonsupervisory workers taking overall inflation into account, normed to 100 as of January 1973 (its peak previous to the pandemic): Wages had...

Consumer inflation rises the most in over a decade; will it draw the Fed’s attention? Let me start my take on this month’s inflation report with my concluding remarks last month: “this is not a big deal if it only lasts another month or two. But if the trend continues longer than that, it will begin to impact consumer spending, and it will get the Fed’s attention.” Well, it has definitely lasted another month. In spades.  The 0.9% increase in...

Steve Hutkins from Save The Post Office, “Why the USPS proposal to reduce service standards will cause “undue discrimination” The Postal Service’s plan to reduce service standards is now being reviewed by the Postal Regulatory Commission for an Advisory Opinion. On Monday, June 21, the Postal Service and several of the intervenors in the case submitted their briefs and statements of position. You can find the briefs here, and the statements of...

During the first Trump impeachment, and the second, House Republicans strongly opposed subpoenaing any witness who might tell the world some of the more egregious things that Trump had done and said as President. During the Senate trials, Mitch McConnell used his position to ensure that no witnesses were called, no incriminating evidence was presented, lest the truth rear its ugly head. Who would have ever thought it would come to this in ‘Our Nation...

Scenes from last week’s June employment report With no significant economic data today, let’s take a look at some of the more salient numbers from the June employment report released one week ago. Starting with the headline employment numbers, both the Establishment Survey and the Household Survey, while diverging in any given month, are in close agreement about the extent of the comeback from the worst of the pandemic, down -4.4% and -4.5%...

Trend in new jobless claims flattens: the virus remains in control in the unvaccinated States New jobless claims are the most important weekly economic datapoint with regard to the effects of vaccination progress. Four weeks ago I wrote, “I think we are going to see two tracks going forward from here, as near-normalcy does return to the more vaccinated parts of the country, while attempts to return to normalcy fail in the laggard regions.”...