Unless a rock has subsumed you, you’re aware of the battle between President Trump and the Federal Reserve. Does President Trump have a point? Is the Fed an independent... Read More
Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) released an opinion piece titled “Growth Is on the Ballot”. The WSJ Editorial Board began the article with this quote from Lawrence... Read More
Hotly debated among demographers today is the happiness of the younger generation. Some analysts point to lower income. Others point to the decline of marriage. Others point to the... Read More
Housing took center stage this past week. Housing starts, new and existing home sales, and Case-Shiller home prices gave us an idea of what the American housing market looks... Read More
Fed Political Bias? Friday's job report was a stinker. The +38K jobs was much lower than the 160K the market expected and the lowest month-over-month figure we've seen since September... Read More
Economic Recovery The Conference Board's Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) came in at 123.9. April's reading, while quite strong, is still below the prior expansion's peak of 126.0 in March 2006. What... Read More
Fed Started Hiking - On December 15, 2015, the Fed shocked the world. It announced that it would start raising rates for the first time since 2006. The politically... Read More
Determine Election Outcome ? Research on what determines the outcome of elections is wide and deep, ranging from whether a war is going on, to GDP growth, to social issues, and... Read More
Today's BLS Report was quite unattractive. Month-over-month job growth came in at 160K, well below the 207K the market expected. Wages are stuck in low gear and are a host... Read More
Government Spending needed for growth? First, an Overview of What We Saw Recently Also see Which President Wins? Looking at Some Politics Connected with Today’s American Labor Market Before addressing the topic of... Read More
Does Anyone See Sadness in Recent Housing Figures? Garnering much less attention than last week’s GDP report were the housing figures. In particular, we received figures on homeownership, vacancies, housing stock,... Read More
American Consumer RIP Economic indicators are noisy, meaning that there’s a lot of movement from month to month. There’s so much noisiness in economic indicators that it causes some market... Read More
Given that the American labor market is by far the most important topic on the minds of voters, today’s labor market report provides an opportunity to review how presidents... Read More
Do American Workers Have Anything To Complain About? Also see Personal incoming and spending by President Aptly summed, the American labor market is fine. The baseline forecast suggests the remainder of... Read More
The recent Personal Income and Personal Spending figures provided two broad conclusions about the state of the American Consumer, American income making and spending behavior. Also Initial Claims Say We’re in Something... Read More
Initial Claims came in at +265K, making it over a year of Initial Claims below the psychologically important 300K threshold. In looking at comparable cycles, one has to go... Read More
Hottest Housing Market On Tuesday, the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) will release its first estimate of home price appreciation in 2016. With New and Existing Home Sales also on... Read More
American Retail Sales Today's retail sales figures disappointed, with a sharp downward revision for January and continued weakness in February. Retail sales in the U.S. are now floating at just... Read More
The Stock Market... It's a packed week for economic indicators. The week includes retail sales, industrial production, capacity utilization, housing starts, consumer and producer prices, Empire manufacturing, and consumer... Read More
Typically, the monthly jobs report is skewed in one direction. This month, it's difficult to say what signal the jobs report is. Here's a look at 5 positive and 5... Read More
The Jobs Report - One of the first things one learns when studying for beginning financial exams is the difference between a leading indicator, a coincident indicator, and a... Read More
China Hard Landing - Around the end of November through the first couple weeks of December, Wall Street analysts release outlooks for the coming year. One prediction that appears to... Read More
