Tag Archives: US EConomics

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for April 5 – 9 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The big news continues to be a bifurcation between the currently unfolding Boom, fueled by the fire hose of monetary and fiscal stimulus, and the fallout in the long leading forecast based on the increase in interest rates as a result. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment on the...

“US Trade Deficit Rises 4.8% in February to Record High,” Commenter R.J.S. at Marketwatch 666 Our trade deficit rose 4.8% February, as both our exports and imports decreased, but the value of our exports fell by almost three times as much as the value of our imports did….the Commerce Department report on our international trade in goods and services for February indicated that our seasonally adjusted goods and services trade deficit rose by $3.3...

Jobless claims: progress pauses, as a new surge in COVID in Michigan and the Northeast causes concern New jobless claims are likely to the most important weekly economic data for the next 3 to 6 months. As the number of those vaccinated continues to increase, I expect a big increase in renewed consumer and social activities, with a concomitant gain in monthly employment gains – as we saw in the March jobs report last week.Three weeks ago I set a...

With a Booming economy comes at least transitory inflation: March producer prices One of the economic subjects you are going to hear a lot about this year is inflation. We are recovering from a sharp if brief recession, and with the dual firehoses of fiscal and monetary stimulus, entering a Boom such as we have probably not seen in over 50 years. Unsurprisingly supplies of commodities and goods that had been cut back during the recession are...

February JOLTS report showed a pandemic still in control Yesterday morning’s JOLTS report for February showed that the pandemic was still in control of the numbers.This report has only a 20 year history, and so includes only two prior recoveries. In those recoveries:  first, layoffs declinedsecond, hiring rosethird, job openings rose and voluntary quits increased, close to simultaneouslyThe recovery from the worst of the pandemic almost one...

The Hippie Dog Whistle Work Ethic Silent-Majority Counter-Offensive Following up on my last post, I was searching for coverage of Ronald Reagan’s infamous “strapping young buck” comment from 1976 and found this wonderful commentary by Ian Haney López on Bill Moyers’s show. [embedded content] In his book, Dog Whistle Politics, López mentions the “work ethic” angle several times. The narratives promoted alike by the ethnic turn and...

How To Estimate “Rational” Market Expectations Of Future Inflation  I am not a fan of rational expectations, hence the quotation marks around “rational” in the subject head here.  Nevertheless I have become aware thanks to some posts at Econbrowser by the intrepid Menzie Chinn that the usual way this has been measured and reported by most people needs to be modified, with the understanding of this only developing quite recently.  This came from a...

Coronavirus dashboard for April 5: the problematic cases of Chile . . . and Michigan As you probably already know, the news on the vaccination front continues to be good, as the US is now administering on average over 3 million doses a day – and still climbing. At this rate of improvement, every adult in the US could be vaccinated by Memorial Day at the end of next month. One bit of not so good news is that the percentage of seniors who have...

I bookmarked a prediction about the coronavirus by supply-sider Scott Grannis one year ago …  As I mention from time to time, I read a number of economic observers with whose opinions I usually strongly disagree, partly because it is good to consider other points of view, and partly because some compile excellent and interesting data, even if I disagree with their conclusions about what the data means. The “Calafia Beach Pundit,” Scott Grannis,...

American plutocracy in two simple graphs; plus, when will wage growth bottom? The JOLTS report for February comes out later this morning; I may post on it later or tomorrow. In the meantime, here are updates on several graphs I used to run during the last expansion in order to examine how shared out (or not) economic growth was. First, here is a graph comparing corporate profits adjusted for inflation, and total nonsupervisory wages, also...