Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

[unable to retrieve full-text content]by New Deal democrat The long leading forecast for H1 2021 at Seeking Alpha It’s been a long time since I “officially” updated my primary set of long leading indicators, mainly because until it is brought under control the coronavirus pandemic renders other indicators moot. But that is likely to change by sometime in spring […]

An Increasing Anomaly In The US Balance Of Payments  On Econbrowser Menzie Chinn has posted about an increase in the scale of US international net indebtedenss. Since the late 1980s the US has been a net debtor internationally, borrowing more from abroad then we are lending and investing there.  The increase in this net indebtedness has noticeably accelerated since our current POTUS took office, and especially this year.  The size of that net...

Real personal income, spending, and consumer sentiment for July July personal income and spending were reported this morning. Since real personal income drives one important election model, I have been waiting to see if July would reflect the end of the emergency Congressional assistance. It didn’t. Real personal income rose less than 0.1% in July. While it is down by -6% from April, it is up a huge 7.1% from July 2019. Real disposable and Per Capita...

by New Deal democrat Weekly indicators for August 24 – 28 at Seeking Alpha  My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The economy as a whole is being driven by lower interest rates, unprecedented Fed supply of new money, stock market gains, and – through July – the Congressional emergency stimulus and unemployment benefits. This is still showing up in all indicator timeframes. It took a few weeks for the effects of the pandemic lockdowns to show...

Jobless claims slowly continue to get “less worse,” while longer term deadweight loss builds The good news in this morning’s jobless claims report is that the trend of “less worse” news continues. The bad news is that the improvement has slowed to a snail’s pace, at levels worse than the worst levels of the Great Recession. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims declined by 68,038 to 889,549, a new pandemic low. After seasonal adjustment...

More evidence that housing has roared back This morning we got the final important July housing reports: new home sales and house prices. New single home sales are very volatile and heavily revised, so it is always wise to take the initial report with a grain of salt. On the other hand, it is the most leading of all the reports. With that caveat, this morning’s report of 901,000 sales annualized is the highest reading since December 2006! It is also in...

More on the bifurcation between the booming stock market and the bust of an economy  I wrote that new stock market highs in the face of the worst US economic downturn since the Great Depression were primarily a function of a few stocks that are particularly tied to the global economy rather than tethered to the US; that those stocks also benefited from delivering online content or physical stuff to homebound consumers; and that the background long...

by Joseph Joyce FDI in a Risky World The pandemic has shown that global supply chains are vulnerable to shocks. Output contracted as factories were closed in China and the impact was transmitted to firms further along the chains and the distributors of the final goods. Foreign direct investment had already slowed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008-09, and there were questions about its future (see here). How will multinational firms...

Whining About Lack Of Academic Leadership  At my so-called university named for the fourth president, the slave-owning “Father of the Constitution.”  No, I am not going to talk about the racism issue, which there is some effort to deal with on campus, notably in renaming three buildings named for Confederate figures, with our Provost originally from South Africa speaking reasonably intelligently about that issue. No, we had our annual general faculty...

Housing roars back As I wrote yesterday, the background longer term fundamental factors for the economy, most importantly all-time low interest rates, are very positive. In particular I wrote, this “has already made an impact on the housing market…Lower mortgage rates cause more people to buy houses. Housing permits have already made back about half of their pandemic losses as a result.” Well, with this morning’s report on July housing permits and...