Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Are We Alone In The Galaxy (Or Maybe Even The Universe?) In 1938 Orson Welles put on a radio show in New York City that dramatized the famous novel by H.G. Wells, _The War of the Worlds_. This novel is about an invasion of Planet Earth by intelligent beings from Planet Mars, with this invasion just  barely being defeated.  Several movies have been made of this famous novel, probably the first to present this now long-running sc-fi theme of our planet...

A new risk at the Fed: Donald Trump’s power to fire Fed Governors Calling it “breaking with decades of presidential convention,” the New York Times reported last week on Donald Trump’s open criticism of recent Federal Reserve rate hikes. quoting him as telling donors at a  fund-raiser in the Hamptons: that he had expected Mr. Powell to adhere to an easy-money monetary policy, by keeping interest rates low, when he nominated Mr. Powell in November to...

 by New Deal democrat New and existing home sales for July 2018: UPDATED with link Both new and existing home sales for July came in low. New home sales were at a 9 month low, and existing home sales at a 2 year low: That’s enough for both series to be scored as negatives, although the new home sales downturn could easily be revised away, and existing home sales are the least important of all housing indicators. I’ll have a full analysis of all home...

Is the rental vacancy rate a leading signal for the housing market? Here is something I noticed while putting together my piece yesterday on the housing market. Three of the series — new home sales, existing home sales, and single family starts — all peaked last November: That made me go back and think about an anomaly I had noticed, but hadn’t figured out, with regard to the rental vacancy rate: which, according to the graph, peaked in the...

Pew Charitable Trust confirms the “rental (and ownership) affordability crisis” In case you thought I was talking through my hat about the general lack of affordability of all types of housing, including both owning and renting, the Pew Charitable Trust has also stepped up with a nearly identical analysis.  Go read the whole thing, but here are a few especially noteworthy excerpts: [A]ccording to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies[, d]emand...

Saudi ARAMCO IPO Definitely Cancelled Reuters reports that the proposed IPO by Saudi ARAMCO, which would have been the world’s largest, has definitely been canceled.  I have posted previously posted about delays in the IPO and rumors it would be cancelled.  Now it has been. The reports say that there were multiple factors.  There were problems with finding a venue for the IPO, with the last candidate being the exchange in Riyadh.  There were reports...

“Economists are active militants against the concept of the lump of labor, that is, the popular idea that the total number of jobs or of working hours is fixed (Walker, 2007).” The quote is the first line from a 2017 paper by Tito Boeri, et al. It gives me confidence that at least some of the time my message is getting through. The image below is from a 2018 report published by the Roosevelt Institute. It tells me there is still a huge amount of work to...

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...