- by New Deal democrat
[I was busy doing my civic duty the past few days. I’ll have something to say about the election at some point later, but not now.]
Still nerdy after all these years
- by New Deal democrat
[I was busy doing my civic duty the past few days. I’ll have something to say about the election at some point later, but not now.]
- by New Deal democrat
My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha.
There’s always some noise in the high frequency data, and this week that noise was in the positive direction, as almost all of the coincident data shows strength.
On the other hand (and this is the economy we’re talking about, there’s always an “other hand,” long term interest rates increased, which made a major dent in mortgage related markers. This is called a “bearish steepening,” becuase the yield curve gets more un-inverted, but not because of lower rates.
As always clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the state of the economy, and reward me a little bit for correcting and organizing it for you.
- by New Deal democrat
As usual, next week there will be a dearth of economic data, so I’ll report on construction spending then.
- by New Deal democrat
Below is my in depth synopsis.
- by New Deal democrat
The monthly personal income and spending report is now the most important report of all, except for jobs. That’s becuase it tells us so much about the state of the consumer economy. It is the raw material for several important coincident indicators that the NBER looks at, as well as several leading indicators on the spending side.
This month’s report for September was absolutely solid if not stellar, as every single important number was positive.
On a YoY growth basis, real spending on services remains slightly higher than real spending on goods, at 3.2% vs. 2.8%.
Prof. Edward Leamer’s business cycle model indicates that spending on durable goods (dark blue, left scale) tends to peak first, before nondurable or consumer goods (light blue, right scale). In September the former rose 0.4%, and the latter 0.8% in real terms, yet again both at all time highs (the former excepting the two binge-spending stimulus months in 2021):
- by New Deal democrat
It appears that, as I suspected earlier this month, the big YoY jump in initial jobless claims was largely due to the effects of the hurricanes, and is now abating.
- by New Deal democrat
As usual, I’ll take a quick look at this morning’s headline GDP numbers for Q3 before passing on to my more important focus on the release’s leading components.
Real GDP grew at a 2.8% annualized rate in Q3. Just like Q2, this is a perfectly good number in line with the past three years:
Stripping out inventories as well as imports and exports gives us real final sales to domestic purchasers, which grew 0.9% for the quarter or 3.8% annualized, also very healthy: