Tag Archives: US EConomics

Initial claims travelin’ man edition: still below cautionary levels  – by New Deal democrat Initial claims were 250,000 last week. The 4 week average increased to 234,250. Continuing claims with a one week delay were 1.716 million. Most importantly, YoY the4 week moving average is up 9.5%: This is well below the 12.5% YoY increase necessary to trigger a new caution. Jobless claims: a good example of why my forecasting discipline...

Industrial production improves, with help from vehicle production: travelin’ man edition  – by New Deal democrat Industrial production increased 1.0% in July. Its manufacturing component increased 0.5%. Total production is still down -0.6% from its peak last autumn, while manufacturing is down -01.%: These are not recessionary numbers.  It’s worth emphasizing that the unspooling of pandemic related bottlenecks is significantly affecting...

TANSTAAFL. There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Someone pays, somehow. The standard textbook example is pilots who refill their plane at a gas station that offers them a “free” steak dinner while charging five cents a gallon more than another station at the same airport. The pilot and co-pilot get $50 dinners for free, the gas station gets an “extra” $150 for the gas sold, and everyone is happy. I believe this story is better at...

“The statement received pushback from environmentalists concerned that constructing new infrastructure to transport more fossil fuels will allow more oil to be extracted and burned, contributing to climate change. “Appeals court strikes down Utah oil railroad approval, siding with environmentalists,” msn.com. Additionally, communities in neighboring Colorado including Eagle County and the city of Glenwood Springs — which filed a brief in support...

In housing construction, the last domino still refuses to fall: Travelin’ Man edition  – by New Deal democrat [First, a blogging note: I will be traveling for the next week and a half. I’ll keep posting the data, but the posts are likely to be brief, and may be a day late. On days when there is no data, I will probably not post at all.] When it comes to housing construction, I’ve been waiting for the last domino to fall. Once again in July,...

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) first came to my attention just a couple years ago. Apparently, anything could be an NFT. Per Investopedia:“Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are assets that have been tokenized via a blockchain. They are assigned unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from other tokens.“NFTs can be traded and exchanged for money, cryptocurrencies, or other NFTs—it all depends on the value the market and owners have placed...

July retail sales: gas and vehicle sales continue to dominate the trend  – by New Deal democrat As always, real retail sales tell us a great deal about what is happening in the consumer economy. July continued the recent trend since gas prices started declining over a year ago. Nominally retail sales increased 0.7%. Since consumer prices increased 0.2%, real retail sales increased 0.5%. Here they are compared with real personal expenditures...

This is one of the types of care where the resource may not be used as often in rural areas when compared to more populated areas. It is still needed in rural areas. The problem being, how do you get the patient and the baby to a fully equipped hospital an hour or more away. In 2019, I wrote “A Woman’s Right to Safe Healthcare Outcomes,” Angry Bear.” I was asked to write this by women who wanted a man’s perspective. I wrote about clinical trials...

This is the Big Story: a 100+ year near-record decline in commodity prices is enabling continued record wage growth and employment  – by New Deal democrat No important economic data today, so let me elaborate on the matter of “immaculate disinflation,” i.e., the decline in inflation without a decline in growth. I’m going to argue that, to the extent there is causation, it is the reverse of what is generally assumed, to wit: that there is...

This is the Big Story: a 100+ year near-record decline in commodity prices is enabling continued record wage growth and employment  – by New Deal democrat No important economic data today, so let me elaborate on the matter of “immaculate disinflation,” i.e., the decline in inflation without a decline in growth. I’m going to argue that, to the extent there is causation, it is the reverse of what is generally assumed, to wit: that there is...