- by New Deal democrat
Since there is no big economic news again today, let me fill in a little more detail on house prices through January, reported yesterday, vs. CPI for shelter.
- by New Deal democrat
Since there is no big economic news again today, let me fill in a little more detail on house prices through January, reported yesterday, vs. CPI for shelter.
- by New Deal democrat
Today is a travel day so I have to keep this brief.
- by New Deal democrat
The theme of my weekly “high frequency” economic indicators update over the weekend was the sudden deterioration in some measurements of financial stress.
- by New Deal democrat
I’ve neglected to put this up for the past several weeks, but by now you know where to find my latest Weekly Indicator post at Seeking Alpha.
Probably unsurprisingly, in the week after the Silicon Valley Bank failure, just about every financial stress indicators suddenly spiked. In other words, credit conditions, which had already tightened by the end of last year, tightened a lot more in the past several weeks.
Like I wrote yesterday, there are only a couple of things still holding up the economy from falling into recession. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the moment, and reward me a little bit for putting in the effort.
- by New Deal democrat
I am increasingly of the opinion that at the moment, the only two economic data series that are important are nonfarm payrolls and the personal consumption expenditure deflator. That’s because almost every other important metric of the economy is either flat or declining. But payrolls keep chugging along (as evidenced by yesterday’s initial claims report showing that layoffs are figuratively non-existent). And the PCE deflator, which covers a broader spectrum than the CPI, keeps helping two coincident indicators important to the NBER, namely real personal income and real manufacturing and trade sales, remain in the plus column.
- by New Deal democrat
Most of what you probably read elsewhere focuses on new home prices, which after finally declining -0.7% YoY in January, rebounded to +2.5% YoY. As is usual, prices follow sales YoY with a considerable lag (note since prices are not seasonally adjusted, this is the right way to make the comparison):
- by New Deal democrat
Initial jobless claims declined -1,000 to 191,000 last week, while the more important 4 week moving average declined 250 to 196,250. Continuing claims, with a one week delay, rose 14,000 to 1.694 million:
- by New Deal democrat
- by New Deal democrat
There were only two noteworthy takeaways from the February existing home sales report:
- by New Deal democrat
There’s no significant economic news today, so let’s update a couple of income indicators important to average American working households. Namely, because we now have the inflation report for February as well as payrolls, we can update average and aggregate nonsupervisory wages.
- by New Deal democrat
Industrial production was unchanged for the month of February, while manufacturing production rose +0.1%. But the bad news is that both were revised lower for the past 5 months, as shown on the two graphs below:
- by New Deal democrat
This morning’s report on housing construction contained both good news and bad news.
- by New Deal democrat
Initial jobless claims declined -20,000 this week, back below 200,000 to 192,000. The 4 week average declined -750 to 196,500. Continuing claims, delayed one week, declined -29,000 to 1.684 million:
- by New Deal democrat
One of the four monthly series of coincident indicators most relied upon by the NBER in determining whether the economy is in expansion or recession is Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales. A significant problem with it is that reporting of the data seriously lags. For example, the result for January will only be reported more than two weeks from now on March 31, because the series relies upon the PCE deflator, which will only be reported then.
- by New Deal democrat
Unadjusted for inflation, retail sales declined -0.4% in February, although January’s blockbuster number was revised even higher, from up 3.0% to 3.2%. Adjusted for inflation, real retail sales fell -0.8%. The below graph, which norms this reading to 100, shows that real retail sales have essentially been flat for almost 1 1/2 years:
- by New Deal democrat
The majority wisdom is that the Fed is going to go ahead and raise interest rates again when it meets next week. I have been arguing for months that the data has not supported interest rate hikes. As of this morning, I am officially taking the position that, properly measured, inflation has been conquered, and the US economy has actually had price *declines* since last June.