Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

May manufacturing continues white hot; April construction spending shows signs of being constrained by materials and costs It’s the first of the month, which means we get our first look at May data in the form of the ISM manufacturing index, as well as April construction spending. The questions we are looking for information to answer from these two leading sectors of the economy, manufacturing and residential construction, are: (1) is the...

by New Deal democrat Comprehensive April housing report: beware the inventory and price boomerang! Now that we have all of the April housing data, my comprehensive look at this long leading sector is up at Seeking Alpha. It’s pretty clear that sales and new construction have peaked in the short term. So, what happens when all of those people who would have put their houses on the market in 2020, but didn’t because of the coronavirus,...

Needing a new shirt? Pair of pants? Sports jacket? Suit? Log on, get your body profiled, if you haven’t recently; chose material. Screen shows what you would look like in the item while you make changes if any. Place the order and item shows up at your door in 7 days; still untouched by human hands. Prêt à porter? Même chose. Could fly to Albuquerque to see your, or your spouses’, mom and dad. Or, you could avoid the old hassle of the airport, of...

Real personal income has completely made up its recession losses, now exceeds pre-recession peak The last of the 4 monthly coincident markers for whether the economy is in recession vs. expansion was reported this morning for April. Let’s take a look. In nominal terms, personal income declined -13.1%, taking back most, not by no means all, of March’s big 20.7% gain. After taking inflation into account, in real terms, it declined -13.7%....

The Trumpification of Xi Jinping  The Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) has achieved great outcomes over the last several decades, especially after the late Deng Xiaoping took effective control of the nation from Maoist holdovers.  He set a model of indirect and collective leadership in contrast with Mao Zedong who ruled nearly absolutely for nearly three decades, while building and enforcing a cult of personality dedicated to himself. Of the top...

New jobless claims continue to decline at rate of 100,000 per month, while continued claims stall at elevated level New jobless claims continue to be the most important weekly economic datapoint, as increasing numbers of vaccinated people and outdoor activities have led to an abatement of the pandemic – both new infections and deaths are near their lowest points in a year.  We have hit my objective for new claims to be under 500,000 by...

by Joseph Joyce International Factor Income in 2020 The sharp contraction in economic activity in the first half of 2020 due to the COVID pandemic was followed by a slow and uneven recovery in the second half of the year. The decline slowed global trade and capital flows, although not as much as initially expected. The economc slowdown also lowered investment income and remittances, the two main forms of international factor income...

Larry Summers Doubles Down On His Inflation Prediction  But somehow becomes vaguer about exactly how this is going to happen and show up, but he wants the Fed to stop it in its track, goshdarnit.  This is in a column appearing in the Washington Post, May 25, “The inflation risk is real.” Well, he does start out by saying that the economic recovery from the pandemic is a good thing, as is of course the the receeding of the pandemic itself, with...

Adam Smith’s been dead for more than 230 years now; Karl Marx for 138. The industrial age began around 1760; ended around 1960. Around 1950, we entered the information & technology age, an age every bit as epochal as the industrial age. Missing to date in this new age is the Adam Smith equivalent to rationalize it; the Karl Marx equivalent to analyze it. Hopefully, one or more of their big minded equivalents will appear forthwith. Will the...

Oil exports drop by the most on record to least since October 2018; global oil shortage at 1.73 million barrels per day, Focus on Fracking, RJS The “global oil shortage” is from my coverage of the May OPEC report, which i’ll paste below; I also revise global oil shortage/surplus estimates for prior months. I don’t know of anyone else who digs this stuff out of this report (a 100 page report is more than most journos can handle)… OPEC’s Monthly...