Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Not quite star wars yet. The past and old age of warfare is changing as we watch the conflict in the Ukraine between one ill equipped small defender and the more modern equipped large attacker. It is only because of NATO and the US equipping Ukraine has the stubborn resistance held up. The lessons to be learned from watching the Ukrainians beat the Russians is something which the US should be paying attention too. While our military may not be as...

Expanding BRICS?  Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping has called for the BRICS group to expand to include Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Argentina, Nigeria, Senegal, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. The original group, suggested by the research department at Goldman Sachs in 2001 as a group to leading future world economic growth was Brazil, Russia, India, and China, who then decided to officially form a group, which then added South Africa...

RJS, Focus on Fracking Summary: Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 34 year low, US oil supplies at a 17 year low, total oil + products  inventories at a 13½ year low The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending May 13th indicated that after a jump in our oil exports, another oil withdrawal from the SPR, and an increase in demand that could not be...

– by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 16 – 20 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The yield curve tightened some more this week (but did not invert). Meanwhile, I am seeing a fair amount of commentary suggesting that a recession is imminent. This is jumping the gun, and is mainly relying on the downturn in the stock market as well as the increase in gas prices. These are short leading indicators,...

“Until we are done with the ironies of history (because they will never be done with us), the image of Trotsky will not dissipate.”~Christopher HitchensI’ve had a lifelong fascination with socialism, communism and the Cold War. This probably springs from having grown up during the Cold War at nuclear ground zero for World War III. Also contributing was that I came of age near the end of the Vietnam War, a proxy war between the US and the USSR into...

Initial claims: a little cooling in the white hot employment market Initial jobless claims rose 21,000 to 218,000, continuing above the recent 50+ year low of 166,000 set in March. The 4 week average also rose by 8,250 to 199,500, compared with the all-time low of 170,500 set six weeks ago. On the other hand, continuing claims declined another -25,000 to 1,317,000, yet another new 50 year low (but still well above their 1968 all-time low of...

Housing permits and starts decline slightly, but housing still an economic positive over the next 12 months Housing permits and starts declined, but not by much, in April. Importantly, while typically permits, especially single family permits, lead these series, in the past year there has been a unique divergence between permits and starts due to construction supply shortages.  This has been reflected in the number of housing units...

Economic Policy Institute offers an explanation that our current inflation is different from previous recessions in the US in addition to what NDd and Barkley Rosser offer : Since the trough of the COVID-19 recession in the second quarter of 2020, overall prices in the NFC sector have risen at an annualized rate of 6.1%—a pronounced acceleration over the 1.8% price growth that characterized the pre-pandemic business cycle of 2007–2019....

Real retail sales signal further expansion, but also continue to suggest slower payrolls growth ahead Nominal retail sales for the month of April were up 0.9%, and previous months were revised higher. That means that, after inflation, real retail sales for April were up 0.6%, a very positive number. Yesterday I wrote that, rather than a YoY comparison with last April, during the stimulus spending spree, the more important comparison was...

What Is The Worst Part Of The Current Inflation In the US we may have seen the peak of overall inflation, with the annualized CPI rate increasing at 8.3% in April, down from 8.5% in March, the highest rate of increase in 40 years. The issue has become the reported top concern of the US public, according to polling, with the hot job market apparently not offsetting the concerns that have arisen due to the emergence of this high rate of...