Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

[embedded content] Credits: Reuben Walker, animation and music. Tom Walker, concept and design. Charles Wentworth Dilke, Sydney John Chapman, and Arthur Olaus Dahlberg, analysis and inspiratio. Tags: econospeak blog

New jobless claims continue to improve, while continuing claims concerningly stall New jobless claims continue to be the most important weekly economic datapoint, as increasing numbers of vaccinated people and outdoor activities have led to an abatement of the pandemic – both new infections and deaths are near their lowest points in a year.  We have hit my objective for new claims to be under 500,000 by Memorial Day. My second objective is...

April retail sales “disappoint,” but maintain almost all of March’s surge [Note: I’ll comment on industrial production in a separate post later]At first glance, April’s retail sales report looks like another Big Miss. Nominally (blue) sales increased less than 0.1% (rounded to unchanged). Adjusted for inflation (red), they declined -0.7%: But the important point is that the big jump in March didn’t get taken back.  As I wrote last month:...

For just a pocketful of Russia’s rubles, Putin facilitated Brexit, doing irreparable harm to the UK and the EU. With what was left over, he did enormous harm to the US, and weakened NATO. No shots were fired, no missiles were launched, and no missions were flown. No weapons that go bang were deployed, and not a single Russian boot trod foreign soil. Putin did more damage with that pocketful of change than his army could have ever done. Yet, the...

Weekly Indicators for May 10 – 14 at Seeking Alpha  by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The big news in this past week, even though it has been expected for several months, was on the inflation front. That doesn’t affect the nowcast, and hasn’t affected the short term forecast yet. The long term forecast continues to be buffetted by increased interest rates. In my commentary this week, I make reference...

April Industrial Production slightly disappoints – but only due to supply chain bottlenecks Industrial production is the King of Coincident Indicators, and is the one whose peaks and troughs most frequently mark the beginning and end of recessions. It had been bouncing back strongly, but in the last several months, has hit something of a snag. In April, total production increased 0.7%, while manufacturing production increased 0.4%:...

“Ambivalence” has dropped! “The Ambivalence of Disposable Time: The Source and Remedy of theNational Difficulties at Two Hundred,” Tom Walker,Simon Fraser University  Two things I am especially pleased about that were sort of incidental at the time: 1. The prominence in the title of “Ambivalence” — the future is ambivalent — and 2. The ending quote by Benjamin of a quote about stereoscopic vision.  The “author’s original version” can...

March JOLTS report confirms that month’s strong jobs report This morning’s JOLTS report for March confirmed that month’s stellar jobs report. Job openings made a new series high, while layoffs and discharges made a new series low. Hires, quits, and total separations all also moved in the right direction.This report has only a 20 year history, and so includes only two prior recoveries. In those recoveries:  first, layoffs declinedsecond,...

We all expected inflation to arrive: now it’s here This morning’s report on April inflation confirmed what we already knew: inflation, both from the demand and the supply side, was coming. Now it’s here. First of all, take the YoY numbers with a grain of salt. Last April saw actual price declines in the teeth of the worst of the pandemic deaths and lockdowns. Here’s the monthly %change since the beginning of 2020 in total inflation (blue),...

The Death of Dick Day I learned a few days ago that Richard (Dick) Hollis Day died about a month ago.  There is no obit yet, so I do not have exact dates of birth or death, but communicating with an old mutual friend who knows his oldest son, apparently he succumbed to dementia and related problems that had him declining over the last several years at his home in Cambria, California.  He was born in 1933, but not sure of exact date, so he was...