Tag Archives: US EConomics

Jobless claims hold their ground against the most challenging comparisons of last summer  – by New Deal democrat This week completed the most challenging YoY comparisons with last summer. Recall that I suspect there may be some unresolved post-pandemic seasonality in these numbers, as this year’s increase starting in late spring has been close to a mirror image of last year’s increase. So if there is some real new weakness in jobless claims,...

It appears people will argue the economic and social positives of the different political parties over periods of time. They probably are different. So, EPI has managed to chart the differences. What the first four charts do is detail the differences between the two parties over two different time periods. One time period staring in 1949 and the next time period in 1981. A contrast in beliefs? Maybe . . . The last two Appendix Charts compare...

Back to my points (AB), we have survived a pandemic, provided for the welfare of the citizenry, and the nation is on its way to better times. The only sticking point being the 2017 tax cut which is leaving the nation with another reoccurring deficit. How quick the influential 1-percenters were to move away from Biden as this was on his list of things to fix. Will a President Kamala make it a priority too? ~~~~~~~~ Back in the 1990s, when...

 – by New Deal democrat Now that we have new as well as existing home sales, let’s take a little more extended look at the housing sector. Let me start by reiterating the big picture: mortgage rates lead sales, which in turn lead prices. Further, new home sales are the most leading of all housing metrics, but they are noisy and heavily revised. The much less noisy single family permits lag them slightly. Finally, we are looking for relative...

After going through a generation (baby-boomers) of supporting equal rights for “all” which includes women (later in the effort), Corporate America (in this case John Deere) is reversing its course. The stance is a “whatever will be, will be” and we will not make an effort to level the playing field. I was working on a cable scaffold about 20 stories up. A 20th floor window opened up and another worker with his canvas bag of tools stepped on the...

Existing home market inventory and prices move slowly towards normalization, while sales remain punk  – by New Deal democrat Since existing-homes sales are less important for economic purposes, and especially with new home sales being reported tomorrow morning, I will keep this brief. What we are looking for is rebalancing in the housing market. For that to happen, we want the inventory of existing homes to increase, prices to stabilize, and...

Biden’s legacy: a Summary by Noah Smith – an introduction to Noahpinion Noahpinion Joe Biden announced today that he won’t seek reelection for President. We don’t yet know who will replace him, but we know Biden’s tenure in office will soon end. Now is the perfect time to talk about Biden’s legacy as America’s 46th President. How Presidents are judged by history is a complicated question, and I don’t have much confidence in my ability...

Morning . . . One other factor I believe you may have missed (too many factors). The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did not pay for itself over the last 10 years. Just a small matter of it passing using Reconciliation which insists it pay for itself (being redundant here). The repeal of it impacts those in the upper 10% (or more) of the taxpayers and more so the 1 percenter who make up a million (taxpayers) or slightly more taxpayers having income...

 – by New Deal democrat Over the weekend Harvard econ professor Jason Furman suggested that the Fed funds rate is not very restrictive: “As inflation has come down the real Federal funds rate has risen and is now the most restrictive it has been this cycle, a point that Austin Goolsbee has emphasized a number of times . . . That is not the way I would look at it. The rates that matter for the economy are long rates. and expected inflation...

Kevin Drum pushes back on the WSJ claim that household debt is a problem in America, and Kevin brings the receipts:“. . . debt as a percent of disposable income . . . is currently lower than it was at the end of 2019 (9.8% vs. 10%).“. . . household debt as a percent of GDP . . . went up during the pandemic and then back down. It is currently lower than it was at the end of 2019 (76.2% vs. 77.7%).“Total credit card balances today are precisely the same...