Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Existing home sales and prices decline; plus, a closer look at multi-unit housing construction  – by New Deal democrat I will keep my comments on December existing home sales and prices brief. That’s because, even though they make up about 90% of the total market, they have much less economic impact than new home construction. They are best used to confirm trends; in this case, that housing sales have continued to decline, and prices (which...

And the King of Coincident Indicators rolls over  – by New Deal democrat This morning’s second big – and big negative – report was for industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators (I call it so because historically, it more often than not marks the exact month +/-1 that a recession begins or ends). In December industrial production declined -0.7%, and manufacturing production declined -1.3%. Even worse, both were revised down by...

December real retail sales: the worst in almost two years  – by New Deal democrat Real retail sales, one of my favorite indicators, was updated this morning for December, and it was significant. It’s not just that retail sales declined -1.1% for the month both in nominal and real terms; it’s that both October and November were revised downward by -0.2% and -0.4% respectively, so the ultimate number is considerably worse than would otherwise...

“Job Market’s 2.6 Million Missing People Unnerves Star Harvard Economist,” (msn.com), Ben Steverman  Originally in a comment in this post Discussion on Solutions to Social Security, Angry Bear. The number I had originally calculated was ~2.6 million people joining the Civilian Labor Force. I had said: Since you addressed me, what group is dropping out of the Civilian Labor Force? “To get back to what the Participation Rate was in 2020, 2.0...

Why the Fed’s present rate hike campaign is almost unprecedented – by New Deal democrat Just how unprecedented is the Fed’s current rate hike policy? Since the Fed started actively managing the Fed Funds rate in the late 1950s, only two other occasions are similar. The reason the Fed is hiking rates is to combat inflation. But, as I have pointed out in the past, the post-pandemic Boom is very similar to the immediate post-WW2 Boom. In 1947...

The important trend in retail sales that Redbook’s weekly report is telling us about  – by New Deal democrat This is the first of hopefully two posts I will put up today. Tomorrow retail sales for December will be reported. In advance of that, I wanted to discuss their comparison with the weekly high-frequency data of Redbook consumer sales, which I have been paying heightened attention to in the past several months. Here is what Redbook...

Article Author April M. Short, an editor, journalist, and documentary editor and producer. Presently she is a writing fellow at Local Peace Economy, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Previously, she served as a managing editor at AlterNet as well as an award-winning senior staff writer for Santa Cruz, California’s weekly newspaper. Her work has been published with the San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Salon, and many others....

Weekly Indicators for January 9 – 13 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. One thing that comes with the territory of high frequency indicators is that they can be noisy. And at no time of the year can they be noisier as during and right after the Holiday season. That appears to be the case this week, as a number of coincident indicators in particular displayed volatility. This should...

“Peter Drucker Sets Us Straight,” January 12, 2004 (cnn.com), Peter Drucker and Brent Schlender This is an oldie from 2004 which still has relevance to what has occurred and is occurring in the world today. Any number of times I have found myself fixing supply chain operations globally for various companies of different countries. Ninety-Four year-old guru says most people are thinking all wrong about jobs, debt, globalization, and recession....

Real average wages and real aggregate payrolls for December 2022  – by New Deal democrat Now that we know December consumer inflation, we can see how the American working/middle class is “really” doing. Nominally, average wages for nonsupervisory workers increased 0.2%, while prices deflated by -0.1%, meaning that “real” average wages increased 0.3% for the month: While this only returns them to April’s level, and -2.2% below their...