Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Can the Fed successfully steer between Scylla and Charybdis? An update As I type this, the spread between 2 year and 10 year Treasuries is back to 0.25%, the level below which I switch my rating on the yield curve from positive to neutral. Already the spread is tight enough that, even if it never inverts, it suggests a slowdown in the next 6-12 months, as happened in 1984 and 1995 in the graph below of real YoY GDP growth and the Fed funds rate:...

Weekly Indicators for August 13 – 17 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. There were 4 long leading indicators that were on the cusp of changing. To see what happened, please  put a penny or two in my pocket by heading on over and reading!

Industrial production cools a bit; retail sales continue strong Both industrial production and retail sales for July were reported this morning. Let’s take a look at both. First, industrial production increased m/m to another all time high (gray in the graph below), as did manufacturing (red): At the same time, if you zoom in on the inset, you can see that manufacturing growth has slowed down somewhat this year.  It is only up +0.8% in the last 5...

Economic Policy Institute has published a new study on the surge in CEO compensation: Summary What this report finds: This report looks at trends in chief executive officer (CEO) compensation, using two different measures. The first measure includes stock options realized (in addition to salary, bonuses, restricted stock grants, and long-term incentive payouts). By this measure, in 2017 the average CEO of the 350 largest firms in the U.S. received $18.9...

(Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Politico End Zone Dance The cover article of politico is a concession by Blake Hounshell that he was wrong and that I and many others were right. I enjoy a little end zone dance in comments The case is overwhelmingly convincing. Also none of the critical evidence is new. As you now are no longer a russiagate skeptic, you should concede that you were foolish in February. All the (100% convincing)...

It’s called the Accountable Capitalism Act.   Here’s the bill text. Yves Smith has a take on this…lots of talk in the news econ sections: Elizabeth Warren introduced her Accountable Capitalism Act in the Senate yesterday and set forth the logic of her bill in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. The Massachusetts senator described how as recently as the early 1980s, even conservative groups acknowledged publicly that corporations were responsible to employees and...

Kevin Hassett In Lie Lie Land I feel sorry for Kevin Hassett.  Of course he made a complete fool of himself two decades ago with his book on Dow 36,000 (still some ways away) with James Glassman, but he has had a good amount of time to get over that embarrassment.  When he was appointed CEA Chair for Trump, he was of the few appointments Trump made that received praise, especially in the  area of economics.  Pretty much everybody else appointed was...

Gimme Shelter: the rental affordability crisis has worsened Four years ago HUD warned of “the worst rental affordability crisis ever,” citing statistics that About half of renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, up from 18 percent a decade ago, according to newly released research by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Twenty-seven  percent of renters are paying more than half of their income on rent. This is a serious...

It has been almost ten years since: Bear Stearns folded Lehmann collapsed of its own free will I posted on this blog All of the above Those who guessed “c” or “d” are optimists. Those who are expecting a long series of posts dwelling on the correct answer of “b” (with some references to “a” and AIGFP) will not be disappointed. But this is an introduction. I have been trying to think of how to simplify ten years of lessons as if there were one root cause....

Four measures of wages all show renewed stagnation This is something I haven’t looked at in awhile. Since 2013, I have documented the stagnation vs. growth in average and median wages, for example here and here. I last did this in 2017. So let’s take an updated look. We have a variety of economic data series to track both average and median wages: The most  commonly known measure is that of average hourly pay for nonsupervisory workers, which is part of...