Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

RJS, MarketWatch 666 Summary: Producer Prices Rose 1.4% in March, Annual Increase at 11.2%, with Goods Up 15.7%, Services Up 8.7%, All Record Highs The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 1.4% in March, as average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 2.3% and final demand for services rose 0.9% . . . that increase followed a revised 0.9% increase in February, when average prices for finished wholesale...

Coming from a different source of information . . . Employ America emphasizes a rapid recovery in 2020 as measured from a pre-recession peak till now. If you recall the 2008 recovery after Wall Street and banks were faltering was by far longer. In this case, we are looking at a Covid inspired period of layoff as compared to previous recessional layoffs. Due to Joe Biden programs and the support of Dems, the nation and labor’s 2020 recovery...

RJS, Focus on Fracking; Summary; Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 20-year low; US distillates exports at a 45 month high leaves domestic supplies at an 8 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 April 8th indicated that after a near record decrease in our oil exports, we were able to add surplus oil to our stored commercial crude...

March consumer inflation part 2: I told you so; the Fed *must* start paying attention to house price indexes This is the second part of my take on the March consumer inflation report. As you may have already read, total inflation clocked in at +1.2% for March alone! YoY consumer prices are up 8.6%, the highest 12-month rate since 1981. As anticipated, gas prices were a huge contributor; less energy, prices were up 0.4%; less both food and...

This comes by way of New Deal Democrat who was doing some research and ran across a not so recent Krugman article via the late Economist’s View blog. Krugman’s prescient words of things to come? Hat tip to New Deal democrat and a thank you for sending this to me. “The Great Illusion” Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times So far, the international economic consequences of the war in the Caucasus have been fairly minor, despite Georgia’s role...

March consumer inflation part 1: real wages decline sharply The March consumer inflation report was particularly important, and particularly bad. So much so that I am going to divide my comments into two separate posts. First, the news on real wages was terrible. While nominally nonsupervisory wages rose 0.4% in March, since inflation rose 1.2%, “real” wages declined -0.8% in March alone. On a YoY basis, real wages were down -1.8%:...

April 10 2022 Natural Gas PricesRJS, Focus on Fracking, Summary; US natural gas prices hit 13 year high on falling production, falling inventories Oil prices ended the week lower for the fourth time out of the last five weeks, as the IEA countries joined the US in an unprecedented release of emergency oil reserves . . . after falling 12.8% to $99.27 a barrel last week after China locked down their largest city and Biden announced an...

Asymmetric Whining  This is not news, but yet again we see the old phenomenon of people whining a lot when something gets worse but then saying nothing when it gets better.  The latest example of that involves gasoline prices.  They were rising and got into the range of near-real highs seen in times like 2008, 1981, and 1918.  But now they have slid backward, down in the neighborhood of 20 cents per gallon where I am.  Crude prices are down as...

RJS, MarketWatch 666, Summary: US Trade Deficit Virtually Unchanged in February, Near Record High US trade deficit ticked lower February, as both our exports and imports increased, but the value of our exports rose slightly more than the value of our imports did . . . the Commerce Department report on our international trade in goods and services for February indicated that our seasonally adjusted goods and services trade deficit fell by...

The current situation is that Russia has abandoned the effort to capture Kiev. Russian forces have been withdrawn from North Central Ukraine and are now operating on an arc from Kharkiv (North East) to Kherson (South Central). So far, Ukraine has won amazing victories and Russia has suffered astonishing defeats. The extreme surprise suggests that we can learn a lot from the war so far. What have we learned ? I will include things that we...